


With a Thousand Eyes and a Good Disguise

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Mission Fic, Movie AU except it's not an AU, just a smidge because I'm weak for them, yes virginia there is a makeover montage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 08:58:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: A new and dangerous terrorist organization has been planting bombs, and their most recent target is the Worldwide Scholarship Initiative for Young Male Professionals. (It's ascholarship competition, not a beauty pageant, no matter what everyone says.) Finally able to take preventative action, Overwatch has the chance to put their own agent in undercover during the competition.Overwatch is known for recruiting only the best and brightest: getting someone to fit the requirements should be easy, right?Instead...they have Jesse McCree.- or -The Blackwatch Miss Congeniality mission!fic that absolutely no one asked for





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eastwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastwood/gifts).



> For eastwood, because SOMEONE is a goddamn ENABLER  
> (<3)
> 
> first off, you definitely don't have to have seen the movie to read this. I ended up having to change a crap load anyways to make it fit with OW/canon/them being dudes, so it's very much not a copy/paste for better or worse. a few lines from the movie are snagged/altered, though not as many as I'd hoped for
> 
> this was basically born of my desire to see Walking Disaster Jesse McCree have to go through a makeover. please trust me in that this could have easily been 30K of makeovers. yall got off lightly.
> 
> title from the Offspring's [You're Gonna Go Far, Kid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weqK155M_4o) because I apparently missed college  
> soundtrack to writing was a shitload of John Fahey

The padded mat groaned out a protest as Jesse slammed down into it face first. Gabe settled himself comfortably on Jesse’s back, pinning Jesse’s right arm in an elbow lock as he wiped sweat from his own forehead and looked up at the half-dozen agents surrounding them. They all had expressions ranging from pained sympathy to glee, depending on how much Jesse had pissed them off lately.

“So.” Everyone made sure to have a sudden look of attentiveness and interest, and Gabe tried not to roll his eyes. “What could Agent McCree have done in order to not be in this position?”

“Chosen to go to jail instead of bein’ beaten up by my boss?” came a grunted answer from underneath. Gabe moved upwards a little and sat down harder, a pained wheeze coming out as Jesse’s rib cage was compressed by Gabe’s not-inconsiderable weight.

“You were dropping your left shoulder, presumably on purpose,” Genji offered in his ever-calm voice. “If he had taken advantage and pulled, he could have flipped you two moves back.”

“Excellent, Genji. It’d be even better if you could actually demonstrate that in training, instead of having Moira toss you around like a ragdoll the way she did today,” Gabe’s tone was pleasant though the words weren’t, and Genji folded his arms and glowered. “All of you are too reliant on your weapons, whether ranged or not. Weapons can always, always be taken out, and you need to still be able to take care of yourself. We’re having extra hand-to-hand drills for the next week, and after you learn to work each other over you’ll all face me and Captain Amari.”

Faces paled. Gabe was their superior, sure, but he was under no illusions that they all found Ana vastly more terrifying. He thought it might have to do with when she wiped the floor with Jack, last time they had an inter-organization competition.

“Can I get up now?” The other agents had left and Gabe had mentally moved on to the op he was putting together in Sweden the next day, completely forgetting about how he was still sitting on Jesse.

“Sorry.” Gabe stood, giving him a hand up once he’d flopped over. They made their way over to the benches where their things were stored, slinging their bags over their shoulders.

“Liar.” Jesse ran a hand through sweat-soaked hair, but his grin at Gabe was bright.

Gabe was about to answer when his tablet went off, and he frowned as he read the message. Jack, and it sounded bad. “Looks like there was another one of the Citizens bombings.”

Jesse own brow furrowed. “That’s, what...five now? Where was this one?”

“A gay club in Schöneberg, Berlin.”

“Are they goin’ to bring us in on this anytime soon? I mean, they’re really startin’ to up the body count.”

Global Citizens for Traditional Values - more commonly known as the Citizens - were an organization with chapters across the world that seemed to spring up overnight. They were staunchly against most of the civil rights progress that had been made in the past century, and focused their battle mostly on gay and omnic rights. It was almost funny at first, this backwards step into old-fashioned prejudice that made them seem out of touch. Then, unexpectedly, they started to gain traction and support: the political hotspot of omnic rights making their other arguments seem almost legitimate.

The bombings started soon after - well-known LGBT safe areas turned into so much rubble, with the Citizens hollering about how it was the omnics fault, the bombs having been coincidentally housed in robotic bodies. They would complain and blame rogue omnics while simultaneously suggesting that the victims brought it upon themselves due to their lifestyle. It was pretty much accepted that the Citizens were doing the bombings themselves, despite all their statements to the contrary.

Gabe sighed as he tucked his tablet away. “Stick around the facility tonight. Jack wants a meeting right now with me and Ana on this, decent chance that we’ll be pulling you in either today or tomorrow.” Jesse nodded, and Gabe clapped him on the shoulder as they separated - Jesse to the showers and Gabe to the Overwatch Situation Room.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“For the first time, the Citizens have issued a direct threat. The UN has been keeping an eye on things, and they were asked by the threatened organization for their help. It’s since been turned over to us, as now there’s something we can directly move against.” Jack flicked a finger at the screen, and a letter came up, plain typed text on white paper. “It’s legitimate, we believe, because of certain references made to the composition of previous bombs and how they were delivered - none of which was released to the public.”

Gabe read the note over quickly. It was the usual rhetoric that the Citizens spit out - the safe future of their people, omnic evils and so on. He sat back. “What’s the group that’s threatened? I don’t recognize the name.”

Jack smiled faintly. “No, I wouldn’t expect you would. The Worldwide Scholarship Initiative for Young Male Professionals is a scholarship competition that’s held in London every year for the past few decades, where young men between the ages of 23 and 30 who are starting their careers - almost always in academia or research - contend for a grand prize. Money and recognition, mostly.”

“And the Citizens are going after them because…?” Ana asked.

Jack hit a button, and the screen was filled with polished, inhumanly attractive young men in a line, with stoles identifying their home country draped over their shoulders. Gabe snorted. “It’s a beauty pageant.”

“It’s a _scholarship competition_ ,” Jack corrected with a sigh. “As I’ve been told _multiple_ times by its director, one Ms. Ellen Atkins. And although it’s never marketed itself as such, it’s known that primarily gay men compete in it - making it a perfect target for the Citizens. Which brings me to the next issue.” Another tap, and another screen popped up. This one showed a piece of debris, metal and plastic separated out into component parts. Both Ana and Gabe leaned forward, looking closely.

“Right...there,” Gabe pointed at a small scrap of plastic. “That perforated plastic. That’s Talon manufacture.”

Jack nodded as be brought up more images of blackened detritus, each with arrows pointing out bits and pieces. “After seeing that, we sent Overwatch techs to go look at the evidence from the previous bombings. They found indications that all of the bombs had Talon materials involved, if not a Talon maker.”

Ana leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs with a thoughtful look on her face. “Splinter faction of Talon gone rogue? Or are they backing this just to sow discord?”

Jack shrugged. “Talon itself doesn’t have an anti-omnic agenda, but I certainly don’t put it past them to have a group act that way in order to cause as much damage as possible. Or it could be a former Talon agent, or a rogue faction like you said. We just don’t know enough right now.”

“So how are we going to do this? Surveillance, put a couple of teams on it?” Gabe asked, already trying to think of who might be available. “When’s the competition, anyways? The note said something about ‘two weeks’.”

“And that was a week ago. The competition is three days long, and it begins a few days from now. As for how we’re going to go about the op…” Jack trailed off as he brought an image up on the screen. It was of a very good-looking young man, all artificially-whitened smile and highlighted hair in what was sure to be a horrifically expensive tailored suit.

“This is Martin Denison. He was the representative from the United States: a twenty-five year old native of Fort Worth, Texas and a Ph.D candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, focusing on geometric topology.” Jack hit another button, the screen now showing Martin with a distinct lack of clothing, his lower half thankfully hidden by a well-placed lamp. “He also decided to supplant his university stipend by making porn. The Scholarship Initiative apparently did not appreciate that, and decided to boot him from the competition. We managed to talk to them first so we can put an agent in his place - new identity, we don’t have to worry about matching his. It’ll be presented like they were the first runner-up. After a lot of negotiations, they guaranteed that they could get our guy into the top five, so they’ll be there until almost the end.”

“Let’s all go through rosters tonight, come up with a short list. 0800 tomorrow?” Jack and Ana nodded at Gabe’s suggestion.

Overwatch was an organization that specifically recruited the young, talented, and genius. They could find a replacement candidate easily.

Right?

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Samuels.”

“He’s embedded in Nicaragua right now and can’t be pulled. Same goes for Rodrigo and Whatley, if you were thinking of them,” Jack said as he checked off the names.

“Damn. I was. What about Gregors?”

“Broken femur. I checked in and they’ve had injured candidates before, but we need someone able to act as a full agent.”

Gabe flipped past file after file. They weren’t updated that often, and he didn’t know about all the intricacies of Overwatch internal affairs - he didn’t get the medlist updates unless it was relevant to one of his missions. He grumbled as he saw the numbers shrink. “Could Henricks pass as being under thirty?”

“Even with makeup, I doubt it. That shrapnel he got hit with really messed him up, and now his voice sounds like an elderly bulldog with strep. We need to make it believable, at least,” Ana said, nibbling on a thumbnail as she sorted through her own files.

“Marklevich.”

“She went through gender reassignment surgery last year. She couldn’t pass, and I wouldn’t make her if she could. It’d be cruel.”

“You really need to update your files, Jack.”

“I know, I know,” he grumbled. “Oh, what about Starkwether?”

Ana stared at him over the edge of her screen. “Jack, he died three weeks ago.”

“Shit.” Jack set his tablet down, rubbing at his eyes. “We really do need to update these. We’re just about at the end, here. Gabe, what about Blackwatch?”

Gabe shrugged, setting down his tablet. They had few enough people that he could pretty much run through them in his head. “Shimada.”

Jack and Ana were silent for a moment, exchanging a look. “Could he...handle it?”

Gabe crossed his arms in thought. “I think so. We’d have to work on him with a bit of accent training, unless it’s okay to have immigrants, in which case we could fake whatever residency they need. This is an American representative after all so I’d imagine there’s some leeway. It’s a beauty pageant, not the presidency, it can’t be that strict.”

Jack was scanning through his messages. “Wait...yeah, here it is. Apparently there are some restrictions on cybernetics. If it was for pure prosthetics it would be all right, but you take one look at him and you know he’s weaponized. Could his parts be replaced?”

Gabe shook his head. “His system is so intricate I’d be hesitant to do anything, and I’m sure there’s not enough time to get the parts in. Hm.” He leaned back, considering.

Ana took Gabe’s tablet, looking through his roster. “Starkwether. Wait, is this the same Starkwether, or a different one?”

“Same one. He was seconded to us during that whole clusterfuck in Mongolia last year. Still dead, in any event.”

“Ptacek?”

“He’s on a six-month undercover gig in the UAE.”

“Ekhart-Deaton?”

“Currently in medbay.”

“Will he be out in three days?”

“Not unless they can rebuild half his face with a miracle of science. Biotics can only do so much.”

“Blackstone.”

“He’s twenty and looks it. Good kid, but there’s no way he could pull this off, much less make it believable to be in the top five. Hell, I don’t know if he’ll survive the next six months of Blackwatch. We recruited him only last month.”

“McCree.”

Gabe snorted. “No.”

“Why not?”

He blinked at her. “Jesse McCree. Who got fired from a simple cover job as a waiter not once, but twice. Who is covered in shitty gang tattoos. Who had to have two fingers reattached last year because he and Shimada decided to play William Tell with shuriken and whiskey.”

Jack looked intrigued, which Gabe found worrying. “You trust him. He’s your second-in-command in all but name, Gabe.”

“Sure, I absolutely trust him with my life, I know he’s got my back come hell or high water. But this is basically a beauty pageant, and you want...that?” He gestured out the one-way window that looked over the mess hall. Jesse was sitting at a table in an old Blackwatch hoodie with the arms ripped off, so covered in old blood and bleach stains that it was more pink and brown than black, and wearing ancient jeans that were mostly hole. He and three Overwatch agents looked to be playing some kind of poker, and one of the Overwatch guys was on his feet pointing a finger at Jesse. The argument heated up in seconds, and the man on his feet flicked a derisive finger at the brim of Jesse’s hat...which promptly fell off and let two cards he had hidden underneath fall to the ground.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gabe muttered. As soon as he saw the first punch thrown he turned his back. If there was any blood on the floor, he’d make the kid clean it up with a toothbrush. He didn’t need to cheat, he just wanted to be an ass and show up the other group. Turning back, he was distressed to see identical looks of consideration on Jack and Ana’s faces. “No. You can’t be serious.”

“We would take literally any other option if we had it, Gabe. He’s thirty, certainly intelligent enough to fake whatever academic backstory we come up with, and I’m sure once you scrape the grease off he’s reasonably attractive. And more importantly, we have no other option. Unless you can figure out how to make you or me look twenty years younger.” Jack sounded more amused than anything, damn him.

He decided to take a different tack. “Venice. You know that tech has said that the media has pictures of us, somehow. You want to put Jesse up there when everyone could know his face at any moment?”

“He was wearing his usual ridiculous hat and cowboy getup. I’d bet that of everyone there, his face was the most covered, bar Genji of course. And tech is on it, they’ll scrub the pictures the moment they appear.” Jack’s voice was implacable.

Gabe looked from Ana to Jack and back again, and let his head thunk back against the wall. “Shit. I’m going to have to be his handler for this, make sure he doesn’t cause an international incident.”

“And also to laugh your ass off.”

“And also to laugh my ass off. Though I won’t be laughing if we can’t get him looking like he could make the top five.” Gabe looked out the window to see McCree standing over the three men who were now on the ground, blood dripping from his fists and his nose, laughing as Genji pulled him away. Gabe’s head hurt to think of what this was going to take. “I can handle all kinds of undercover, but this is beyond me.”

Jack gave a crooked smile. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Gabriel!”

“Gérard, how have you been doing? It’s been too long.” Gabe and Gérard gave each other a friendly handshake, Gabe clapping the other man on the back as they walked away from the helipad on top of the London skyscraper. “I understand that you’ll be our main contact with the Worldwide Scholarship Initiative?”

“Indeed I am. I was a competitor myself, some years ago. I did not win, but I thought what the competition did was important and have involved myself in France’s division for the past few years. Today we are going to meet with Ellen Atkins, the head of the competition. Without her involvement, none of this will get off of the ground.”

“I thought she was the one that came to us, asking for help?”

Gérard sighed. “Yes, but she did not realize the help would involve placing an agent as a competitor. She is...less than pleased with this.”

Gabe frowned. “It’s by far the best way to keep an eye on things, from both the inside and outside. The competition is all well and good, but it’s all for nothing if they end up dead at the end.”

Holding the door to the building open, Gérard gestured for Gabe to enter. “Well, you will have your chance to tell her that now.”

Just inside, a woman and a man waited for them. The woman was a very well-preserved fifties, hair sprayed in place and plastic surgery scars invisible but for the slight pull of skin when she gave the agents a practiced smile. The man behind her was younger, rumpled and awkward. The woman held out a hand, nails a perfect inoffensive pink and fingers festooned with subtly expensive rings.

Gérard took her hand first, bending to give it a kiss. Gabe tried to keep from sneering. Sometimes Gérard was too French for his own good. “Ms. Atkins, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Oh no, Mr. Lacroix, the pleasure is all mine. I see you’ve brought a friend?” Her voice was the bland RP English of a newscaster, from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Commander Gabriel Reyes, ma’am. I’ll be heading up the operation for the pageant.”

The hand shaking his turned stiff, the smile brittle. “We prefer to call it a scholarship competition, Mr. Reyes.” He was given a very deliberate once over, Atkins’ eyes lingering on the knit hat, the facial scars, the ammo belts. Gabe’s smile was as false as hers was. He was a Blackwatch commander, not a beauty queen - she could take her judgment somewhere else. “Let’s go inside, and discuss your...operation.”

They soon found themselves seated in a spacious office, the walls festooned with pictures of beauty queens and beauty...kings? Gabe wasn’t quite sure how to refer to the men in the photos with perfect white-toothed grins and shining crowns. Atkins settled herself in her chair, tilting her head just a big as she asked, “May I get you any refreshments? Tea or water?”

“No, ma’am, we’re fine - “ Gabe tried, but was waved off as if Atkins didn’t bother to hear what came out of his mouth.

“Nonsense. William?” She turned her head towards the disheveled young man who had been dogging her footsteps, presumably an assistant. “Go get us some tea, there’s a dear.” She turned back towards Gabe and Gérard. “It is quite unfortunate that the American competitor had to leave our program. We here at the Worldwide Scholarship Initiative take pride in our applicants being moral, upstanding young men. I take it that your replacement will be a fit to our ideals?”

There was a slight pause, as Gabe tried to reconcile Jesse McCree with the idea of being a ‘moral and upstanding young man’. “Well, he is one of my most trusted agents, who has an excellent mission record. I have no doubt he’ll be able to handle whatever you throw at him.”

Atkins frowned, as much as her Botoxed forehead allowed her to. “Mr. Reyes, I think of this competition as my child. I have nurtured it for decades, to find the best and brightest so that we can properly fund their studies and help them begin their careers. Your agent shouldn’t just be able to handle what is thrown at him, he should be a legitimate competitor to all the other young men who have worked extremely hard to get here.” She held out an imperious hand. “I presume you have some sort of file on him, some mockup of his comp card?”

 _Comp card?_ Gabe mouthed in confusion, but Gérard was already pulling a memory stick out and handing it to her. “This is far from the final draft, just what we pulled together this morning when we determined who would be on the mission.”

Atkins plugged it into her desk, and a sheet with text and photos sprang up into the air in front of her. Gabe read it backwards, not willing to go around the desk and get closer to the woman to read it the right way round. It seemed to be the same sheet as Jack had showed him yesterday for Martin Denison, with the information replaced. It listed Jesse’s real name - Gabe winced at that - and listed his statistics: age, height, weight, clothing sizes. All seemed to be accurate, as far as Gabe knew. It then listed his (incorrect) birthplace, his current (fictional) course of study in political science at Stanford, and then a string of lorem ipsum where further biographical details and hobbies would go. The closeup picture appeared to be Jesse’s Blackwatch ID, complete with hat pulled down over his eyes and cigar in mouth. The full body shot Gabe recognized as from the armory’s uniform reference photos, Jesse’s usual getup complete with weaponry.

Atkins was not happy. “You expect this man to place in our competition? Surely you must be joking.”

Even though Gabe was just as dubious, no one got to mock his agents but him. “Ms. Atkins, I assure you that Agent McCree is one of our best agents and has done innumerable undercover operations without incident.” Also quite a few with incident, but they weren’t going to talk about those. At least he wouldn’t have to fake an Italian accent for this, thank Christ.

Atkins directed a withering glance at Gabe before dismissing him entirely. “Gérard, you will use Yann on this.”

Gérard’s eyebrows raised. “Ms. Atkins, I’m sure you know that after that tragic loss, he has not coached - “

“You will use him. I know that he’s in Switzerland now, no doubt getting fat on chocolate and cheese - he needs something to do. And isn’t that where your group is stationed? You don’t even have to go anywhere to get him. Here.” Atkins typed something rapidly into her tablet, and a buzz came a moment later from Gérard’s pocket. “That’s his current address. Go pick him up and have him perform a miracle or two.”

Within minutes Gabe and Gérard were ushered out onto the rooftop, headed back to their helicopter. Once inside with headsets on, Gabe asked, “Yann?”

Gérard sighed. “Yann Eulert. He’s a legend in male pageant coaching, had a string of wins for ten years straight. I lost against the man he coached when I competed. But one year he went up against a man who had invented a new type of mechanical heart sized for children and infants.” Gérard gave a very Gallic shrug. “Sick children. You just cannot compete against that. His contestant had a meltdown on stage, and Eulert was blacklisted after. Has not coached since.”

“And you think he can turn Jesse into something that lady will approve of?” Gabe asked skeptically.

“He can at least try. Now I just have to convince him to come out of retirement, which I don’t believe will be that difficult. He’s not doing particularly well, I saw him a few weeks ago and he looked depressed. I assume I can use Blackwatch funds for this?”

“Overwatch funds, actually. Use whatever you need, just keep track for reimbursement.” Gabe looked out the window and sighed. “Want to trade jobs? I’ll go convince this guy to do his magic if you convince Jesse to do the op.”

Gérard laughed. “You mean you haven’t told him yet? You only have three days to get him ready, two once we get there and pick up Eulert this evening.”

“It’s just another undercover op. I’m sure he’ll be fine.” Gabe said, hopefully.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Jesse asked flatly.

“You’re making this sound like I’m asking you to do this. It’s an order, Jesse.”

Jesse looked from the pictures of shiny-faced competitors to Gabe’s own grumpy face and back again, with a side stop on Ana’s unforgiving expression. “Boss, you know the kinda shit I’ll do for Blackwatch. Kill whoever, fuck whoever, line the streets with dead omnics and blown up buildings. But this crap? You _know_ I’m not the right guy for this.”

Gabe shrugged. “I’m not disagreeing. But we literally have no one else who’s the right age and gender. We have two days to get you ready, then three days of the competition. This is the man you’re replacing.” He brought Martin Denison’s picture up.

Jesse squinted at it. “Y’know I’m bad with names, but I never forget a face. I know that guy.” Gabe frowned. Was Denison involved in any other unsavory operations? Maybe he was one of the Talon contacts for the competition. Before his brain could go any further down that route, Ana rolled her eyes and hit a button, bringing up the screenshot from Denison’s porn video.

“Oh, there we go! _Denny Does Dallas_ , that was a good one,” Jesse said cheerfully. At Gabe’s glare and Ana’s snort, he shrugged. “What? So-so performances but it had decent production values.”

Gabe pulled the memory stick, blanking the screen. “And that would be why he’s no longer a competitor. Gérard is bringing in some legendary male pageant coach, guy named Eulert. Known for turning out winners, but hasn’t done it in awhile. We’re going to meet with him today.”

“When?”

“Now.” Gabe looked Jesse up and down. “Do you have anything non-uniform that isn’t falling apart?”

Jesse looked down at the threadbare, nigh-obscenely tight Blackwatch shirt that Gabe was fairly sure Jesse had been issued when he was recruited and the same ripped-up jeans as the day before. “I’m off duty today.”

“Not anymore. Go put on something that won’t embarrass us as an international organization and meet me in the hangar in fifteen.”

“Boss -”

“Go.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Oh, _c’est beau_ ...I am truly lucky to work with such a canvas.” Gabe’s face was currently being fondled by a man in a turtleneck. He’d had better introductions to total strangers. “ _Vos yeux sont comme du chocolat riche de fonce, vos pommettes_ \- your facial structure...oh, _merci beaucoup, cher_ Gérard. This will be a pleasure.”

“Yann, Gabriel is the agent in charge of the mission, not the one going undercover,” Gérard said, amusement in his voice clear.

Eulert stepped back, disappointment on his face. “What a shame. I could do much, with such a face.”

Gabe cleared his throat, thankful the flush in his cheeks wouldn't be noticable. “Mr. Eulert, I’m Commander Gabriel Reyes, the handler for this mission. We have two days before the competition starts, and we need your help to turn my agent into a viable competitor.” He stepped aside, gesturing to Jesse. He was in all black and chewing on his cigar, but he looked pretty good, for Jesse standards. “This is Jesse McCree, who you’ll be working with.”

Eulert looked him up and down, face going from disappointment to blankness. He turned to Gérard and started a blistering screed in rapid-fire French that Gabe was pretty sure he should be happy he didn’t understand.

Jesse leaned in. “Now I don’t know much French, but it’s close enough to Spanish that I’m fairly certain I’m offended right now.”

Before Gabe could reply, Gérard jabbed a finger into Eulert’s chest, pausing him in his tirade. “Now listen here. You are getting paid horrifically well for this, so you need to work your magic. That thing with the man and the cows and the _gendarmes_? Fix Jesse up and we can make it go away and get you let back in to France.”

“Do you want a hat?” Gabe offered. “We could give you a Blackwatch hat, too.” He considered for a moment. “Although you can’t actually wear it anywhere or the UN will court martial you.”

Eulert blinked at Gabe before turning his attention back to Gérard. “Really? I could go back home again?” At Gérard’s nod, he squared his shoulders and looked at Jesse again with determination in his eyes. “Take off that silly cowboy hat, let me look at your face.” Jesse did so, frowning. His eyes widened as Eulert gave him a none-too-gentle slap to the cheek. “Don’t frown. You’re old enough that it will give you even more wrinkles than you already have.”

“Old…? I’m fuckin’ thirty!”

“And have the sun damage of a fifty year old farmer. Have you even heard of sunscreen, you oaf? And your language, _mon dieu_ ...I can already tell the interview portions will be a challenge.” Eulert was walking around Jesse, occasionally poking at an arm or his chest, eyes narrowed in concentration. Finally he stopped, crossing his arms deliberately. “It is not hopeless, but only just. There is something I can work with, underneath. Deep underneath.” He turned to Gérard. “Here is what I need…” and he started listing off things in French that Gérard noted down on his tablet. Eulert wrapped a scarf around his neck with a dramatic flourish before pointing at Gérard. “I expect to have what I require, otherwise he will not work out. _À demain, messieurs_.” He stalked off to his waiting car.

Gabe and Jesse turned as one to Gérard, who made a helpless gesture. “He knows what he’s doing. You’re going to have to put aside ego for awhile because he is the only way you’ll get through this.”

“Where are we meeting him?” asked Gabe.

“0700 tomorrow, in the empty hangar on the west side of headquarters. Jack agreed to let us use it for a few days. Now I’m off to go hire and rent everyone and everything that we need.”

“That’s fine, just keep the receipts and submit them to the financial officer,” Gabe said.

“Until tomorrow.” Gérard departed with a wave.

“I can tell already this is goin’ to be a blast,” Jesse said with the air of a man going to an execution.

“It won’t be that bad,” Gabe said as they started the walk back to their car. “Maybe you’ll even learn something. Like how to wash your hair properly.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next morning Gabe and Jesse stood yawning outside the hangar, coffees in hand. “You think he’s going to show?” Jesse asked sleepily. “If not, can I go back to bed?”

“Please tell me you’re not hungover.”

“ ‘M not. Was up late with Genji tryin’ to see if I could shoot his shuriken out of the air.”

“Anything damaged?”

“Not permanently.”

 _Not permanently_ covered a lot of ground, but before Gabe could enquire further the hangar doors opened and Eulert gestured them in. Inside the hangar had been divided into various areas by rolling curtains, and Gabe recognized little of what he saw laid out on the tables. He was mostly sure they were beauty tools and not torture implements. Mostly.

“Today we work on the...problem area,” Eulert said, gesturing to Jesse’s entire body. “Tomorrow morning we work on walking, posing, and interview questions before travelling to London in the evening.”

“I know how to walk,” Jesse protested.

Eulert raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Not across a stage. Now.” He snapped his fingers, and some black fabric appeared if by magic in his hands. He shoved it at Jesse, who clutched it to his chest automatically. “Get changed so we can get started.”

He pushed Jesse behind one of the curtains and a few minutes later he emerged in a black tanktop and black shorts, barefoot and shivering. “If I’m stuck wearin’ next to nothing, can we at least turn the heat up?”

“Chloe!” Eulert called, and a woman in a white coat popped up out of nowhere. Eulert grabbed Jesse’s left arm and pulled it out, turning it to show his Deadlock tattoo. “Match this skin tone. We need waterproof airbrushing with a sealant that won’t come off on clothing.” The woman nodded and took several photos before scurrying off.

“You going to tell him about all the others?” murmured Gabe as Eulert scurried off to grab another beautician.

“Nah, he’ll find ‘em eventually,” Jesse said easily.

Eulert marched over, dragging Jesse away. “Haircut then shower.”

“Don’t you dare cut my hair, it’s fine how it is!” Jesse protested.

“It’ll grow back!” Gabe called out with a grin, met with a finger from Jesse that lasted until he was pulled around a curtain.

Gabe settled himself in a chair. The sound of various mechanical implements rose and fell, as did Jesse’s arguments and Eulert’s increasingly short-tempered retorts.

“What the fuck are you doin’ with that? That’s not coming anywhere near me.”

“Hopefully removing several decades’ worth of tobacco and coffee stains. Now hush and open wide.”

“Last guy who said that got mrhllghrmlghr…” Jesse’s voice trailed off into a gurgle, which soon turned into muffled yelps of pain.

Some time later:

“Pedicure my ass, no one’s seein’ my feet.”

“ _Au contraire_ , they certainly will. And you certainly need better than...what do you cut your toenails with now, a cigar cutter?”

“They usually get broken off during trainin’, or fall off from running. And let’s go back to the seein’ my feet thing: why?”

“The swimsuit portion.”

“ _What?_ ” Jesse’s shout was loud enough that Gabe felt compelled to get up and make sure he wasn’t going to start throwing punches. He found Jesse with his head wrapped up in a towel and body wrapped in a robe, sitting in a chair with a beleaguered-looking woman kneeling at his feet, using something on them that looked like a tiny belt sander.

Jesse looked at Gabe frantically. “I’m not wearing a fuckin’ swimsuit in front of everyone!”

“Language, Mr. McCree. And yes you are, it’s one of the portions of the competition.” Eulert reached into a bag and pulled out a pair of...well, if you asked Gabe they’d be particularly tiny boxer briefs made for someone around Oxton’s size, but apparently they were swimwear.

“I’m not wearin’ that. Get me a normal swimsuit.” Jesse said flatly.

“This is a Gucci square leg swimsuit, and it is at the height of fashion this year. You will wear it.”

“I’ve worn less when actually havin’ sex, get me somethin’ that wouldn’t get me arrested for indecency.”

Eulert sighed and walked off muttering to himself in French. Gabe leaned back against a stack of boxes and raised an eyebrow. “Of all the things I’ve called you over the years, prude was never one of them.”

Jesse crossed his arms. “There’s a difference when you’re on a mission. If someone takes a shot at me, that scrap of fabric isn’t goin’ to do shit.” He looked up at Gabe, something almost vulnerable in his eyes. “You recruited me because I can shoot, strategize, and will call you out on your crap. This...isn’t what I do, Gabe.”

“We all do things we don’t want to in this line of work. Remind me to tell you about how I spent a month in a submarine with no one for company but Martinez.”

Jesse looked horrified. “With all the snorting? And the flatulence…?”

Gabe lifted a shoulder. “We do what we have to for the mission. And for you that means wearing a swimsuit in front of people.”

“How many people, exactly?”

“Oh...I don’t know...not that many, I’m sure,” Gabe said evasively. He wasn’t going to tell Jesse that apparently this was broadcast with the same audience fervor as Eurovision.

Eulert popped up out of nowhere, holding something blue. “Here. Better for your puritanical American sensibilities.” It was a pair of jammers, going down almost to the knee. Still skintight, no doubt, but they would cover more. Jesse gave a stiff nod.

An hour later saw Gabe slouched in a chair, typing out emails with half his attention. Eulert sat down next to him, releasing a heavy breath. “How’s it going?” asked Gabe.

“That _burns_ , you dick!” came a yell from their right.

“It would be better if we had a week instead of a day, but we work with what God has given us,” Eulert said blithely.

After a few minutes of pleasant silence there was a sudden blood curdling howl, and Gabe found himself on his feet in a defensive crouch, gun in hand. He knew Jesse, and that was the sound of real pain.

“Calm down,” said Eulert soothingly. “He’s fine.” At Gabe’s enquiring eyebrow, he gave a shrug. “Waxing.”

Gabe frowned. “He really doesn’t have that hairy of a chest…”

“Oh no, not his chest, they use cream for that. _Lower_.”

There was another pained yell, and both men winced in sympathy.

After the whimpers had died down, Eulert wandered over behind the curtain where Jesse was and immediately started bellowing in French. Gabe rubbed his temples and walked over, ready to break up yet another argument.

“ _Où ceux vient-il?_ Where the hell did all of those come from?” Eulert said loudly, gesticulating at Jesse.

Jesse had his head under some sort of dryer and the robe had been pushed down to his waist. His chest was strangely hairless and reddened, but it wasn’t enough to hide his scattering of tattoos.

“Well if you really want to know,” Jesse said mildly, “this one -” he pointed to a shaky skull and rose on a pectoral “- was done by a guy I knew in the backroom of a bar as thanks for gettin’ his girl out of jail. The one on my upper back was done as practice for this gal who was tryin’ to get an apprenticeship -”

Eulert walked off, clutching at his hair in a way that said some of it would get pulled out. “CHLOE!”

“That one’s new,” Gabe said, nodding at Jesse’s ribs. “Aces and eights?”

Jesse smiled, turning a bit to show the stylized hand holding cards, of better quality than most of his other tattoos. “Dead man’s hand. Genji found this aftermarket tattoo attachment doohickey, we stuck it on his mechanical hand to see what it could do.”

“You are aware that these are permanent, not stickers in a little kid’s book?”

“And you’re assumin’ that I’ll survive past next week. Everythin’ is temporary in our line of work.” On that sobering statement, Jesse and Gabe were quiet for a minute until Eulert wandered back.

“We will deal with that later. Now we need to get you measured,” Eulert said, venom in his voice.

“Overwatch has Jesse’s measurements on file -” Gabe started.

“Not the measurements that we need. Jean-Michel!” A small man with a pencil behind his ear and several measuring tapes draped around his neck appeared out of nowhere. “Get him fitted for a suit. Black, obviously, a silk blend, try Tom Ford first and then Gucci. We need this ready for tomorrow, so we’ll have to modify off the rack. Do a second in a dark shade of jewel tone if there is time.” Eulert tossed a pair of underwear at Jesse. “Put those on and come with me.”

They pulled the hair dryer thing off of Jesse, and he looked vaguely like he’d been electrocuted. He sneered at Gabe’s bitten back smile as he walked - though honestly it was closer to a waddle - by. “Not one word, boss.”

The sound of raised voices not half an hour later had Gabe wandering through the maze of curtains, trying to figure out where the argument was coming from. He found Eulert and Jesse on a raised dais surrounded by mirrors. Jesse had on a half-buttoned white shirt and no pants, and Eulert was either trying to button or unbutton the shirt, it wasn’t clear.

“They ruin the line of the shirt!”

“So get a darker shirt and they won’t show through!”

“ _Tu imbécile absolu_ , it has to be white to contrast with your skin tone!”

“Gabe!”

“Mr Reyes!”

Gabe rubbed at his eyes with a tired hand. This was getting old. “Jesse, take the goddamned nipple piercings out. You can put them back in a week from now.”

The argument started back up, and Gabe walked away.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Evening, and they’d finally managed to get a table full of food for everyone. Gabe looked it all over before making himself a burrito roughly the size of a small child.

“Thank fuckin’ god, I haven’t eaten anything since coffee twelve hours ago,” came an exhausted voice from behind Gabe, and Jesse appeared in a somewhat terrifying green face mask and yet another robe. He reached for Gabe’s carefully constructed creation, and Gabe reluctantly handed it over, feeling vaguely bad for everything he’d been through so far.

“No, no no,” Eulert said, appearing out of nowhere to grab the burrito away and hand it back to Gabe. “You have this.” He handed Jesse a cup with a straw sticking out.

Jesse eyed it balefully. “What is it?”

“The only thing you’ll be consuming for the next few days, so drink up,” was the heartless response.

Gabe grabbed the cup, peeled the lid back and took a sniff, unable to stop the look of revulsion on his face as he pulled back. “Oh,” he said, rubbing his nose as Jesse took the cup back. “It’s -”

“Aw fuck, it’s the same protein shit you all gave me to bulk me up when you recruited me,” Jesse said after taking a sip. “It’s not even chocolate flavored this time,” he said mournfully.

“You’re not seventeen anymore, your tastebuds should have matured past it.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “Let me liberate your own overly mature tastebuds, boss.” He snatched the burrito away, but Eulert took it back before he could take a bite. He handed Jesse a stalk of celery.

“Eat this if you absolutely must chew on something. It can only help your breath.”

Jesse grumpily grabbed the vegetable. “Mm mmm,” Jesse half-heartedly moaned in false pleasure around the crunching of celery, glaring at Gabe.

“Mmm mm _mm_.” Gabe made his own sounds of actual enjoyment as he bit into the burrito, shreds of cheese and a bit of guacamole sticking in his beard. He grinned at Jesse before turning to walk away, and wasn’t overly surprised at the celery stalk that hit him in the back of the head moments later.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Head back, chest out, back straight, weight on the balls of your feet, and now...glide. Glide, damn your eyes, what do you not understand about the word?”

“How it applies to me?” Jesse scrubbed his hand over his face. It was eight the next morning, and Eulert had been trying to get him to walk the way he wanted him to for an hour now. As the suits weren’t ready, Jesse was allowed to wear Blackwatch sweats. He’d crammed his hat on his head and fondled Peacekeeper menacingly until Eulert stopped sneering at him and Gabe took the gun away.

“You walk like you’re swaggering in to a bar. Now you need to walk like you own the runway, like there is nowhere else you’d rather be,” Eulert instructed, making expansive gestures with his hands.

“Even though I would like to be literally anywhere else?” Jesse grumbled, but he went back to the start of the runway and tried again. It was...less than successful.

“I don’t know how you’re expected to pretend to be able to win if you don’t even _try_.” Eulert stomped off, no doubt to call Gérard yet again to complain.

Jesse came and sat down next to Gabe, letting his body tilt until he was half collapsed against him. “Just shoot me now, please,” he said, muffled in Gabe’s shoulder.

Gabe reached over and absently patted him on the arm as he typed on his tablet with the other hand. “Huh,” he said, attention pulled away from his messages as he stroked Jesse’s arm a little more. “Your skin is disturbingly soft.”

“They _exfoliated_ me,” Jesse muttered, his tone suggesting it was closer to torture than a spa technique. “They scrubbed away half my calluses. I worked for those, it’s gonna be hell to build them back up again.”

“At least you smell good for once,” Gabe said, taking a surreptitious sniff. Gone was the usual scent of gun oil and sweat, now he just smelled...clean. A little musky, a little spicy. It was nice. “They put cologne on you or something?”

“Nah. Haven’t showered since yesterday, neither.” Huh. Maybe that’s what Jesse was supposed to smell like, underneath the cordite and greasy hair.

Eulert was back, looking calm but for the white knuckles clenched around his tablet. “Let us try this again.”

As Jesse got up with a sigh, Gabe leaned back against the wall. “Jesse.” He looked over. “Stop thinking of this as something weird and foreign. Think of it as a set of moves you have to learn. It didn’t feel natural to do combat rolls or flips at first, but you practiced them, internalized them. It’s the same here.” Jesse still didn’t look happy, but he did look thoughtful.

Another few rounds of walking and Eulert wasn’t pleased, exactly, but was mollified. “All right, you’re acceptable on this for now,” he said, waving Jesse over to a chair. “Now let’s talk talent. What are you going to do for the talent portion of the competition?”

“Whatever you want me to, partner,” Jesse said with a yawn. “Just tell me what to do.”

“ _Mon dieu_ ,” Eulert whispered, closing his eyes. “Mr Reyes!” Gabe startled upright, having dozed off against the wall. “This man has no talent!”

Gabe blinked. “You don’t have to say it in front of him like that.”

“No, I mean that I was not expected to provide a talent for your agent. He needs to be able to perform something on stage for five minutes.” He turned to Jesse. “Can you dance? Do a monologue? Arrange furniture?”

Jesse shrugged. “I’ll just do some trick shootin’. Easy enough.”

Gabe was already shaking his head. “You can’t have weapons up there, I checked. It’s going to be hard enough getting you concealed carry, with all of the security they have. You’re definitely not going to be able to have a gun up there.”

“What about a crossbow?”

“Still classified as a deadly weapon.”

“Staff?”

“No.”

“Well shit.” Jesse drummed his fingers on his arm, face guarded and oddly nervous. “I got something. It’s been awhile, but I can do it.”

“You need anything for it?”

“Nah, I just gotta pack a few things.” Jesse glanced over at Eulert. “How much more time is this all goin’ to take? We’re gettin’ close to when we gotta leave.”

“I am aware. Come with me, final suit fittings and putting you all together into a normal member of society. Come on, come on.” He dragged Jesse away, who looked back at Gabe with a look of anxiety.

“Avenge me, boss. Avenge me.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“How much longer is this going to take? We were supposed to be in the air half an hour ago.” Things took a bit longer once Eulert realized that Gabe wasn’t kidding about concealed carry, and they had to modify the suits with some emergency alterations. Jesse ended up having to call Genji and talk him through packing his stuff up. Everything was on the plane, now they were just waiting on Eulert and Jesse. Ana would be coming with them, as Overwatch and UN representative, to smooth over any ruffled feathers.

Finally, the doors opened. A stream of white coated beauticians came out, followed by a smug-looking Eulert and a very attractive man in a suit that Gabe didn’t recognize. Gabe kept looking for Jesse, right up until the attractive man flicked his hair out of his face with a shake of his head.

Oh.

Oh no.

“What,” Gabe said flatly. _Well hello there,_ Gabe’s dick said interestedly. Gabe told his traitorous body to shut the hell up, because this was his agent, his subordinate...who was somehow transformed into everything Gabe never knew he wanted in a man. The tailored suit hugged him perfectly, showing off broad shoulders tapering to a trim waist, fabric stretching around thick thigh muscles. When Jesse turned to say something to Eulert, Gabe could see that the view from behind was just as enjoyable - black fabric clinging to a muscular rear end. Since when did Jesse have an ass, much less one that round and edible? It was always covered by ammo belts or sweatshirts or serapes, so apparently it had been hiding away until Eulert dragged it out and put it in front of Gabe like a goddamn buffet. Gabe had been carefully ignoring Jesse’s looks for a decade now as something he wasn’t allowed to have, and Eulert was undoing all his hard work.

“You’re drooling, Gabriel,” Ana said mildly. He glared at her, but was aware that his mouth had been literally hanging open. “Make sure everything is ready to go,” he snapped out. Ana just smiled in response as she got into the helicopter. He stepped forward to meet Eulert and Jesse. “You ready?”

“I have gel in my hair, makeup in places God never intended makeup to go, and I haven’t had coffee in over twenty-four hours. Give me something to shoot,” Jesse snarled. ...And the spell was broken. They were nearly at the helicopter, but instead of getting in, Jesse backed Gabe up against the nose of the vehicle. They were very, very close, close enough that Gabe could smell his cologne and the mint on his breath, could see how they’d trimmed and neatened up his normally shaggy facial hair.

“Gabe. Somewhere...on your body…” Jesse purred. Gabe swallowed, hard. “You have your emergency cigarettes. Please, for the love of god give me one, I haven’t had a smoke since yesterday and I will fuckin’ murder everyone on board if I don’t have one before we leave.” The sound of desperation fueled by nicotine withdrawal was real, and Gabe grumbled before pushing Jesse away. He pulled the pack out of a hidden pocket on his thigh, and Jesse snatched it out of his hands.

Breaking the filter off and tossing it, Jesse bent down to let Gabe light the cigarette for him. The sound he made as he inhaled was nigh pornographic, not helped by how Jesse sagged back against the helicopter. _Down boy_ , Gabe had to tell his body. Getting inappropriately aroused before a two hour flight was not the way to go.

Eulert popped up out of nowhere and glared daggers at Jesse. “You’re not smoking are you?” he said. “The smell will get into the fabric and we will never get it out.”

“Nope,” Jesse said blandly, “just holding it for Gabe here.” Gabe took the cigarette, sticking it in his mouth and trying to ignore the faint taste of mint that Jesse’s lips had left on it. Eulert gave both of them a suspicious look before leaving, and his coat was still in view when Jesse snatched the cigarette straight out of Gabe’s mouth and took a deep inhale. “You know, I could really grow to hate that guy.”

“Just four more days. Come on, we need to go.” Jesse gave the cigarette one last puff before looking at it longingly, dropping it to the tarmac, and grinding it out. They got into the helicopter, officially on their way to the pageant.


	2. Chapter 2

They worked out Jesse’s backstory on the flight to London. He would be a political science Ph.D student, focusing on the Crisis and international response. He’d be able to fake pretty much anything thanks to having been immersed in it for the past decade, the only thing he’d have to watch out for would be not accidentally discussing any information a student wouldn’t have access to. Eulert tried getting Jesse to answer a few practice interview questions, but only got snapped, sarcastic responses. Gabe separated the two - they’d been forced together for a day and a half, and they wouldn’t get anywhere by sniping at each other.

“Let’s talk logistics,” Gabe said, handing a few items to Jesse. “Standard earpiece com linked directly to us and the surveillance computer, we’ll be able to hear each other. American flag pin - this will be our eyes. Make sure it’s pinned to your chest at all times.”

“What about during the swimsuit portion?” Jesse asked with a grin.

“Get creative,” Gabe said blandly, as Ana snickered next to him. “We’re all at the Park Plaza, where the competition will also be held. We managed to get your room moved to the ground floor, and our command center will be one floor up. It looks like you’ll be stuck with a roommate, some other competitor - there’s nothing we could do about that.”

“Weapons,” Ana said, as she opened the duffel bag at her feet. “One gun in an ankle holster, one at the small of your back. Ankle sheath for a knife on your other leg, and a wrist sheath that you’ll likely not be able to use most of the time, given what you have to wear.” Jesse strapped everything on as it was handed to him one by one. Gabe tried not to look as Jesse bent over to get the second gun placed properly, head nearly hitting Gabe’s knees. He could feel Ana watching and trying not to laugh.

“A couple of garottes, a sheet of tracker dots, knockout drops and tabs, microsyringes, mace, prophylactics.” It’s not like they were expecting Jesse to need to sleep with anyone, but better to have them and not need them than the other way around. Jesse made the pouch with everything in it disappear into a pocket.

“Anythin’ else?”

“Not for the moment, other than whatever Eulert will be bringing. He’ll be in the room next to ours. We’re having two techs meet us there, Davila and Lee. Someone will always be on duty, we’ll hot rack. Either Gabe or I will always be on com.”

Jesse frowned, looked at Gabe. “You’re not coming with me to all this shit?”

“And say what, that I’m your hairdresser? We can explain Eulert, but I’ll stick out, defeating the whole purpose.”

“If it becomes necessary, we can fit him in as a bodyguard or a needy boyfriend or something similar,” Ana said, smirking at Gabe once Jesse looked away from her. She was such a nosy little busybody, sometimes. Ana had been after Gabe to try and have a personal life for decades, and he’d fended her off by not showing interest in anyone, ever. Now she was like a shark that smelled blood, and Gabe was just a bucket of bait.

“It shouldn’t come to that. You’ll investigate on the scene, talk to the contestants and such. Ana and I will monitor and work the behind the scenes stuff. We’ll dress like security, Atkins said she’d give us badges that will get us past most everyone,” Gabe said, trying to focus on the mission.

Ana was typing rapidly on her tablet. “I just sent the final bio sheet off to the Initiative. Alias is Joel Morricone.” Jesse rolled his eyes but nodded. He’d come up with the name as a joke years ago, looking at an old spaghetti Western poster in the lounge, but it had now been a pseudonym he’d used a half dozen times. “Atkins just sent me the final itinerary, I’m forwarding it to you now. The first thing is a formal dinner tonight, where Atkins will talk and you’ll mingle with the other candidates. Then it’s moving in to your room - a quiet night. Rehearsals start at 7 am local time -”

“What rehearsals?” Jesse interrupted.

“For tomorrow evening, when they start the broadcast. You all come out, it’s all synchronized.” At Jesse’s wide-eyed look, Ana tried to reassure him: “It’s less dance competition, more marching band. You just move around the stage in set movements. Don’t panic. We’ll have some time to regroup after that, then the opening ceremonies are that evening, followed by the first interview portion. You don’t have to worry too much, we’re guaranteed to get into the top five, but you should make sure it’s at least somewhat believable.”

“Gérard sent me an archive of previous winners’ answers. Just use them as a template,” Gabe added.

“Second day is the talent competition and swimsuit portion. That’s when they cut it down to five, announcing it the next morning,” Ana continued. “The final day is a second talent round and interview, then they announce the winner. That’s when we expect the Citizens to make their move.”

The helicopter started its descent, and they all quietly argued about how the Citizens could plant the bomb until they disembarked onto the helipad on the top of the hotel. Eulert grabbed Jesse in one hand and Gabe in the other, hustling them towards the entry doors. “We have fifteen minutes before the dinner, and you look a mess,” he said as he pushed them into the first bathroom he saw. “Stand there and don’t move.”

Producing a lint roller seemingly from thin air, he started to brush at Jesse’s now slightly-rumpled suit. Gabe and Jesse looked at each other, and shrugged as one. Gabe nodded at Jesse’s pocket with the video pin in it. “Put the pin on and let’s test connectivity.” Before Jesse could do more than undo the back, Eulert snatched it away.

“What is this? And why is it so cheap-looking?”

Gabe took the pin back, handing it over to Jesse. “It’s for our video feed. Jesse needs to be wearing it at all times.”

“It’s an American flag. It’s tacky.”

“It’s called we don’t have another option, so deal with it, Mr. Eulert.”

He huffed, but found a place on Jesse’s lapel that he somewhat approved of. Gabe opened up his tablet and brought up the feed. It was clear. He gave a quick call to Ana to make sure that she had access as well, then motioned for Jesse to put the com in. “Try and keep it on channel one, that’s the general broadcast. If you need to talk to just me, I’m channel two, and Ana’s on channel three.”

Jesse inserted the earpiece, causing Eulert to have to redo the section of hair he was working on. They made sure it broadcast com-to-com properly, before all getting into the elevator. Gabe would get off on the second floor to visit the command center, and Jesse and Eulert would continue down to the first floor and the dinner.

“Hey,” Gabe said quietly as the elevator slowed down. Jesse was staring at the elevator doors, his hands clenched into fists just this side of white knuckles. “It’s more involved than usual, but it’s just another op. You’ve done it a thousand times before. I’m in your ear, okay?”

Jesse’s gaze didn’t move, but Gabe saw his hands relax a bit. He leaned to the side, bumping Gabe’s shoulder with his own - a comforting gesture developed over the years between two men who usually had their hands full of weapons. “Try and remember to use a napkin, not your sleeve,” Gabe said on his way out, rewarded by a slight smile and a roll of eyes. If nothing else they hadn’t had to go over mealtime etiquette - Overwatch and Blackwatch agents had to attend enough state dinners that they had training courses every year.

Gabe knocked on the door to 203, opened a moment later by Ana who handed him a keycard. Their two techs were already there in front of a hastily-constructed wall of screens. Most were showing the view from the hotel’s various security cameras, and the largest was showing the view from Jesse’s pin. He was currently walking along the hallway with Eulert to the ballroom where the dinner would be held.

“Atkins just sent over the files of the other competitors. There are fifty total, including Jesse, and most are pages and pages long. The only upside is that because the Initiative operates in English, we don’t have to do any translation.”

“Hit me,” Gabe said as he sank down into one of the surprisingly comfortable office chairs. Ana handed him a tablet, and Gabe opened the first file. “Let’s start at the top. Bahiri Shahzad, Afghanistan. Pediatrician who is doing research in infant oncology.” Gabe rubbed at his temples. “God. They’re all going to be like that, aren’t they? Squeaky clean, and their country’s best and brightest.”

“Like lambs to the slaughter,” Ana said cheerfully. “Or possibly a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to extend the metaphor.”

“Great. Here, I’ll take the first ten, you take the second, and we’ll switch to see if we missed anything, yeah?” Gabe suggested.

“Sure. Let me just make sure that Jesse’s all set on everything.” Ana flipped to a different screen on her tablet, syncing it with the image of the ballroom above where Jesse sat at a table with a half-dozen other men. It appeared that Atkins was reaching the end of a speech. “Amari to McCree. Click if you hear me.”

There was silence other than Atkins’ voice and the soft sounds of a room full of people. “Repeat: Amari to McCree. Click if you hear me.” Still nothing from Jesse.

Gabe turned on his own tablet. “Reyes to McCree. Click or perform action to acknowledge.” At the lack of response, Gabe leaned over to the main computer display. “Can you see if...oh, there we go, the volume was turned completely down. He flicked it upwards. “Reyes to McCree. Acknowledge.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Jesse blurted out loudly, followed by a much softer murmur, “That’s loud as hell, boss.” Gabe hurriedly turned down the volume output to a more reasonable level as on screen every person in the room turned to stare at Jesse.

“I’m..I apologize, y’all. I realize I forgot to say grace before eating,” Jesse had the charm turned up to eleven, putting a sheepish note in his voice. The other contestants turned away, half of them moving their own mouths in quiet prayer.

“Good cover, McCree,” Ana said with amusement in her voice. “You can obviously hear Gabriel, click if you hear me.” A moment later came a confirming click. “Keep on doing your thing, try and make some friends. We’re going over contestant files now.” Another click, and Jesse’s smooth rumble started up, making conversation with the person next to him.

“That’s Mr Singapore he’s talking to,” Ana said, tapping away. “Entrepreneur, pretty cutthroat one, actually. Has won a number of pageants like this, he’s going on a platform of founding a philanthropy but I’d bet he’s going more after the pageant recognition than the money.”

“Put him on the list of potential suspects, I suppose. Talon has their fingers in any number of business pies, they could have gotten to him.” Ana hummed in agreement, and they went back to perusing files in silence.

Hours went by, dinner ended and everyone mingled. Gabe listened in every once in awhile but it was all the inane conversations of people thrown together that didn’t know each other, regardless of how intelligent they all were. Finally, everyone was dismissed back to their rooms.

Jesse’s roommate turned out to be the New Zealand representative, Hone Ngata: a six and a half foot tall man built like a brick house with a surprisingly soft voice. They made small talk as they unpacked. Ngata was a veterinarian, specializing in farm animals. New Zealand apparently had many times more sheep than humans, so he had pretty constant work. He wanted to use the money to start up a non-profit clinic for low-income farmers, and do some research into animal disease on the side.

“Well, he’s a saint,” Gabe muttered to himself as he typed up the daily report to send to Jack. He glanced up at a knock on the door. It was Eulert.

“The first interview is tomorrow, I need to ready Jesse.”

“Joel.”

“Pardon?”

Gabe sighed. “Get used to calling him Joel. You’ll be in public with him more than the rest of us, we don’t want you to slip up.”

“Regardless of what he is called, we need to make sure he is ready for the interview. It should seem that he legitimately is elected to the top five, and he needs far more preparation.”

“True. Give me a second, let me get changed.” Gabe put on a plain black suit, strapping on a shoulder holster before he slipped his jacket on. He tucked into his pocket a badge that Atkins’ assistant had dropped off, identifying him as a member of security. If he didn’t have to use it, he wouldn’t, it’d be better to keep himself as neutral a background figure as possible.

They went down the stairs to the first floor, Gabe scoping out the layout of the hotel as they went. He’d do a more thorough sweep sometime in the middle of the night when no one was around. He knocked on Jesse’s door, and it took a good minute for him to answer. He was in pajama pants and a long sleeved henley - thankfully it was chill enough in the hotel to excuse long sleeves that could cover up tattoos. He looked exhausted, and Gabe felt bad for just a second as he remembered how little sleep he was running on right then.

“You need to come and work on interview questions with Eulert,” Gabe murmured, leaning in so Jesse’s roommate wouldn’t hear. “Put on some pants and come on.”

“It’s past midnight, Gabe, and I’m goin’ on five hours sleep over the past three days. If you want me to answer interview questions at all without me trippin’ over my tongue then I’ve gotta get some shuteye.”

“And none of that will help if you don’t know how to answer the questions in the first place. I’ll make sure he doesn’t keep you too long, all right?”

Jesse scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. Okay, give me a sec.” He went inside, shutting the door. Gabe listened to the soft rustle of fabric through the com as Jesse looked for a pair of pants.

“Who was that?” an unfamiliar voice asked, and Gabe winced. He’d been hoping the roommate was asleep.

“Ah...it’s, uh, kind of complicated.” Jesse said, hesitantly.

“Oh. Is he...a boyfriend? Are you not out yet?”

Jesse didn’t answer immediately, and Gabe murmured into his earpiece, “Go with it. It’ll explain me being around and you can use it to bond with him, sounds like.”

“Yeah, he’s my boyfriend. And I’m out, but it’s different here, when I’m representin’ my country.”

“I get it.” Hone sounded sad. “I...well. My family is in politics, both my parents. It was decided that I shouldn’t be an embarrassment, so…”

“That’s bullshit, Hone. Parents are parents, but you’re a grown man and should do what’s goin’ to make you happy in life. And if that’s romance, then you should be able to pursue it.” Gabe was surprised at Jesse’s vehemence. They didn’t talk much about personal lives in Blackwatch, but Gabe had known Jesse for a long time and his sexuality seemed to be summarized as ‘yes, please’. He was surprisingly discreet, but Gabe had few illusions about Jesse’s chastity, or lack thereof. Regardless, he wasn’t one for long-term romantic relationships.

An awkward laugh. “I guess. That’s one of the reasons I’m here, I guess. Try and get the money to make it on my own, so they don’t have a say in how I live my life.”

“Sounds like a plan, partner. I’ll be back in a bit. Don’t tell the higher-ups, yeah?”

“Sure, sure. I’ll see you later.”

Jesse slipped out of the door, letting it shut softly behind him. He handed a keycard to Gabe: “Here’s the second one for the room, figured you all should have it.”

Gabe nodded, tucking it in a pocket. “Good thinking.” He turned to Eulert. “Well?”

They followed the pageant coach to an empty conference room, Gabe pulling the curtains to the hallway closed as Jesse and Eulert settled themselves. Eulert had a stack of papers in front of him. He put on a ridiculously small but no doubt hideously expensive pair of reading glasses, and picked up the top sheet. “Mr. Morricone. Tell me your idea of a perfect date.”

Jesse stared at him with his mouth hanging open a little. (Gabe firmly told himself to stop thinking what he was thinking.) “Are you serious? I thought that this was supposed to be a real scholarship competition.”

Eulert made a dismissive sound. “As much as they like to pretend to be, this question was used two, five, and eleven years ago. It’s not unreasonable that it could come up again.”

Cracking his knuckles in a vaguely threatening way, Jesse slumped back in his seat. “Well, I have to say that I like piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain.”

Eulert made notes, apparently not recognizing the nearly hundred-year-old reference. “Good to know. Where would this date take place?”

Jesse smiled slightly. “That depends. Are you into yoga? Do you have half a brain?”

Eulert frowned as Gabe rubbed his temples. “Jesse. Not the time. As bullshit as it is, take it seriously.”

A loud sigh. “Fine. Hiking. National parks. Picnic. Blah blah blah.”

A similarly loud sniff from Eulert. “Hmph. What are your views on omnic representation on the global political stage?”

Jesse perked up at that one, and gave a relatively eloquent answer with almost no profanity. Almost.

They went through questions for an hour and a half, most on the complex, political and cultural side, with a few softball fluff ones thrown in. Unsurprisingly, those were the ones that Jesse struggled with.

“And finally, what would you say would be the biggest step any nation could take towards establishing world peace?”

Jesse snorted. “World peace is a myth. Humanity will always have assholes, and as long as there are assholes there will be assholes in power and world peace can never happen. The most likely bet is a multinational mutually assured destruction, a Nash equilibrium of a hundred players. The best case scenario is a vague détente, but given the state of the world and who we all are, with the enemies that are out there? World peace is a fairy tale for children an’ members of Overwatch.”

Gabe couldn’t help the smirk that took over his face. You underestimated Jesse McCree’s brain at your own peril, as the taken-aback look on Eulert’s face was proving.

“Although that was an answer that you clearly feel...deeply about, it is an unacceptable answer to the judging panel. Please remember that this competition is meant to indeed be a competition, but also foster camaraderie between the participant countries.”

“So what, play dumb and pretend I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about?”

“No, not exactly, just be more delicate.”

“Whatever.” Jesse stood. “I have to be up an’ dressed for rehearsal in four and a half hours. What the hell am I wearing for that, anyways?”

“There is a set of black sweats in your bag. But please try not to actually sweat into them, they’re Balenciaga.”

Gabe followed Jesse as he got up and walked out, leaving Eulert to organize his papers. He caught up to him with a few long strides, pacing him down the hallway. “You feeling okay about tomorrow?”

Jesse shrugged. “All I can do is try, I guess. I’m guaranteed the top five, so it’s just watchin’ everyone else and trying not to be worse than most of them.”

“Sounds about right. I’m going to do a sweep of the hotel now, I’m handler on duty ‘til you go off and do your dancing thing, Ana will then take over until midday. We’ll both be on from then until late. We’re both keeping coms in 24/7, though, so hit up the private channels if you need anything off hours.”

“Copy.” They were at the door to Jesse’s room. Gabe could see in how he fumbled at the keycard that he really was exhausted.

“Get some sleep, kid.”

Jesse just gave a tired smile as he shut the door. Gabe clipped the security badge to his suit pocket and pulled out his tablet, looking like a bored security guard. He took the elevator to the top floor and began his long, zig-zagging survey of the hotel. Between the fifteen floors and the various ballrooms and conference rooms the competition was using, it was going to take all night. With a sigh, Gabe started to walk.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“How’s he holding up?” Gabe asked as he knuckled sleep out of his eyes, pushing open the suite door from the bedroom to the living area that they turned into the command center.

“Do you have any idea how loudly you snore? I had to shut the door,” was Ana’s only response.

“Yeah, that started up about the tenth time I broke my nose. Moira said she could fix it, but I don’t trust her.”

“Because _that’s_ what you shouldn’t trust her on,” muttered Ana. Louder: “He’s doing all right, though I thought he might punch Eulert when he gave him one of those shakes for breakfast. A great deal of annoyed commentary, but he’s been connecting with some of the other contestants. Singapore, Venezuela, and Canada in particular. Plus the roommate, of course.”

“Anything interesting about them?”

“Not so far. You know about Singapore, though I couldn’t find anything sordid about the man even though I set one of the techs on a search. Venezuela is in school for structural engineering, trying to use local materials to build up dams. Canada counts penguins.”

“There are no penguins in Canada.”

“I’m aware. Apparently he spends all his time down at the tip of Chile, doing something that involves tracking and counting them. He’s researching how to bring back the great auk? I must admit I started to tune him out after a while.”

Gabe sat down heavily in his chair, reaching up to flip his earpiece back onto the general channel. “McCree, I’m back online.” A clicked acknowledgement from Jesse, as he walked down a corridor talking with the Kazakh competitor about weight training.

“They just had lunch, they’re now free until five. Dinner, final rehearsal at six, on air at seven, interview portion at eight.”

“I’ll go check in with Eulert then Jesse, see how they want to play it.” Gabe got up, already dialing the Frenchman’s number. Surprisingly, Eulert was fine with how Jesse was doing, so Gabe headed down a floor.

Knocking on Jesse’s door, Gabe was surprised to find Jesse’s roommate, Hone, at the door. Looking up, Gabe gave his best smile. “Hi there, is Joel in?”

“Sure, just a moment. Joel?” The large man stood aside, letting Gabe in.

Jesse came out of the bathroom, drying his face with a towel. He smiled when he saw Gabe. “Hey darlin’, I was just washin’ up.” He came over and wrapped his arms around Gabe’s neck, as Gabe let his own arms twine around Jesse’s waist. “If I don’t get a smoke soon, I will kill every person in this room includin’ myself,” he murmured lovingly into Gabe’s ear.

Gabe smirked against Jesse’s temple. “We’ll get you a patch or something,” he whispered.

Jesse stepped back, tangling the fingers of his hand with Gabe’s. “Let me show you around outside,” he said, suggestive tone in his voice. Gabe gave a fake sigh, directing a _what can you do?_ look over at Hone before allowing himself to be pulled out the sliding door that led to the outside. The pool was immediately outside the door, and the two men passed it by in favor of going around the corner of the building. This area had little but a few lawnmowers ready to be used, and Jesse immediately leaned up against the wall and closed his eyes.

Rooting around in his pocket, Gabe pulled out two cigarettes and lit them both, handing one to Jesse who once again broke off and pocketed the filter. He relaxed at the first puff, frown smoothing out. They smoked for a while in silence.

“Sorry about the boyfriend thing,” Jesse said abruptly.

Gabe shrugged. “Not like we haven’t had to do it before.” They had, perhaps a half-dozen times, though previously Gabe hadn’t been quite so...aware of Jesse. Of how well his clothes fit his body, of how his newly soft skin felt. Of what he smelled like with a good scrubbing down. Gabe had been aware that Jesse had grown up attractive and then some, but it was far easier to ignore when he was a bit more hygienically repulsive. There were lines that Gabe shouldn’t cross, much as he might want to.

“Had any feelings about anyone you’ve talked to?”

Jesse lifted a tired shoulder. “Not really. They pretty much run the gamut politically, but everyone’s pretty gay friendly given where we are. Not a big fan of Singapore, he’s shrewd in a way I don’t like.”

Gabe nodded. “We’re already keeping an eye on him, but it looks like he’s more business minded than anything else. What about staff and such? The chances are likely better it’s one of them than a competitor.”

“No one’s stuck out, other than Atkins’ assistant, William. He’s a little creep, makes all kind of nasty comments an’ has wanderin’ eyes.”

“Really,” Gabe said thoughtfully. “We haven’t really looked at him closely. Good catch.”

They walked slowly back to the room, pausing outside when they saw Hone was still inside. “Do you need me for anythin’ right now?”Jesse asked. Despite the nicotine, Gabe could see he was ready to keel over.

“No. Take a nap, you have dinner at five. Eulert will stop by at five thirty, make sure that you’re all ready for the dress rehearsal at six. Then it’s straight through: performance and interview. Just try to look good in a suit, don’t miss any steps, and don’t swear on stage.” Gabe opened the door, ushered Jesse in.

“You gonna tuck me in?” Jesse said with a crooked smile as he toed his shoes off. Gabe shoved him down on the unmade bed, tossing a blanket that had been bunched up at the bottom over him. Jesse’s grin got bigger, but he flicked a warning glance over at Hone. Oh yeah. Boyfriends. Gabe gave a slight nod and reached down to smooth Jesse’s hair back gently. It was shorter than it had been, with an actual style other than ‘fits under a hat’. Jesse’s eyes closed as Gabe’s fingers combed through - his hair was silky and thick, and Gabe found himself not wanting to take his hand away. He did so, though reluctantly, and tried to ignore the soft noise Jesse made in the back of his throat as Gabe pulled back.

“Get some sleep. Need me to set you an alarm?” Jesse shook his head and reached out, eyes still closed, to give Gabe’s thigh a pat.

“ ‘M fine. Go annoy Ana.”

Gabe rolled his eyes and turned to leave as Jesse flopped over to face the wall. He stopped when he saw Hone watching him carefully, with a somewhat sad expression on his face. He looked somewhat like a very large, melancholy puppy, and Gabe found himself asking, “Everything okay?”

Hone just smiled a bit. “You two care about each other a lot.”

“I -” Gabe was taken aback a bit. “I guess so, yeah.” He gave a hesitant smile, and left as quickly as he could. This wasn’t supposed to be part of the op at all, and they shouldn’t make it into more than it was.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe was just settling down in front of the video screens in the command center - currently showing the rehearsal, and Jesse really was bitching an incredible amount about it all - when Ana burst in to the room.

“There’s a problem with the roommate.”

“Hone Ngata? I’ve talked with him, and I’m fairly sure I’ve encountered more threatening bunny rabbits.”

“Well, bunny rabbits still bite, and this one got arrested for protesting animal rights.” Ana handed Gabe her tablet, and sure enough there was a younger Hone with a molotov cocktail in front of a pet store. Gabe frowned, zooming in to make sure it was the right guy. “Huh. He is a vet, but he’s a large animal vet that works with farms. Don’t they have to be pretty practical, know when to euthanize animals and such? What would someone who works so closely with the animal industry be doing protesting it?”

“I’m not sure. It was most of a decade ago, and New Zealand doesn’t have the most extensive news service. The only reason we found it at all was because his parents are relatively well known. Politicians, on the conservative side.”

“Conservative, hm. Hone mentioned that he couldn’t be out because of them. Maybe he got resentful, decided to take it out on everyone that could be out and proud?” Gabe asked, trying to come up with a theory that could make sense. He didn’t get anything violent or angry off of the man the time they’d spoken, just wistfulness at the false relationship that Gabe and Jesse had.

“Flimsy, but it’s not like we have anything else to go on. Let’s tell Jesse to really try and talk to him tonight, see what might have happened back then.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

They decided that they would switch off who monitored Jesse in person vs in the command center. Right now Eulert was just off to the side of the stage while Ana paced around the set, watching carefully as Jesse smiled and walked around with the other competitors. Gabe was upstairs monitoring through Jesse’s camera, the security cameras, and the local television broadcast. Jesse looked surprisingly competent, hitting his marks when he needed to. After they all walked around, they did a quick wardrobe change during commercial break and then came out one by one, with a short announcement as to who they were as they showed off what they looked like in a suit.

Jesse was one of the last, followed only by Venezuela and Vietnam. He came out in a well-tailored suit, so dark green it was nearly black. Gabe had to admit Eulert knew how to dress a man - the fabric moved beautifully as Jesse walked across the stage, tightening and stretching over muscles in a way that said the suit was made just for this one, fit man. Gabe switched over to the private channel as Jesse was walking up to hit his final mark, murmuring “Showoff,” as he strode up to the dias. Jesse gave an actual grin at that, as opposed to the practiced smile he’d been using, and Gabe couldn’t help but smirk a bit in response.

The interview portion went surprisingly well. The competitors were in groups of five, and Jesse’s group included Singapore and Hone. Singapore, when asked about solutions for poverty, gave a shockingly insensitive answer that left the judges with raised eyebrows. This made it easy for Jesse, when asked about problems that affect education, to talk about children having inconsistent food sources and win them all over. Canada answered well though aggressively, and El Salvador gave such a neutral answer it was hard to tell what he was even saying.

Hone, sadly, fumbled his own question. The interviewer asked about hard water, expecting an answer about the mineral contamination that had paralyzed multiple cities’ water supply in recent years. Instead, Hone understood hard water to mean...ice. If the question had been about global warming and glacier formation it would have been spot on. As it was, Gabe watched as two of the other contestants covered their faces from sheer secondhand embarrassment and Jesse bit his lip so hard trying not to smile that he nearly drew blood.

After it was all finally over, Gabe started talking to Jesse over the com as the competitors left the theatre. “Work on bonding with Hone tonight, okay? We found an article that showed him with a molotov cocktail at an animal rights’ protest a decade ago. See what you can get out of him about it.”

“Will do,” Jesse muttered, and was soon striding ahead to catch up with with the large New Zealander.

In the room, Jesse took off the flag pin and carefully set it on the dresser so it would have a view of the room. Gabe watched as Hone sat on his bed, dejected. There was a rustle of fabric as Jesse hung his suit up and got changed off to the side of the camera.

“You doin’ okay?”

“No. You heard my answer, I was an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot, it was a perfectly good answer. Just not exactly to the question they were askin’.”

“Exactly. So they think I’m an idiot.” Hone frowned down at his fingers as he picked at a loose thread on the bedspread. “And even more than usual, because Christchurch has a huge problem with magnesium in the water, it’s been making everyone sick. I could have easily talked about that for a few minutes.”

Jesse came into view, wearing loose sweatpants and another long-sleeved henley. He sat on the edge of Hone’s bed. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. Out of our group, at least. Singapore was way worse. He sounded like he was ready to just shoot all the poor and leave ‘em to rot.”

Hone smiled, just a bit. “He is a bit of a jerk, isn’t he.”

“You can say that again. I wouldn’t be surprised if those business ventures he’s always talkin’ about turn out to be somethin’ real shady.” Jesse casually leaned back on his hands, cocking his head innocently at Hone. “I’d imagine he has some kind of record, seems like the type. Who knows how he even got here.” The slightest of pauses. “What about you? You seem like you have a horrible, sordid, past. Do anythin’ interesting as a kid?” He tempered it with a laugh, making it seem like a joking, casual question.

“No, no. I’m the most boring person alive. Just me and my sheep and horses, with the occasional set of goats or cows.” He shook his head. “Not like my brother.”

“Brother?”

“My twin. Identical twin, actually. Kai.” Jesse clicked, but Gabe was already starting up the search engines. “I think he’s why my parents are so hard on me, expecting me to be the good child. Kai was always in trouble over this and that, but it wasn’t a big deal until our parents got elected. I was headed off to veterinary school but he was headed off to protests. I love him, and I support his right to free speech and all, but…” he trailed off. “His being who he was meant I can’t be who I am.”

Jesse started saying something about identity, but Gabe tuned it out. “Ana, get in here,” he called.

“What?” She came in, long hair tied up with a startlingly blue face mask on. Gabe made it an immediate goal to get a picture to send to Jack. And possibly keep for blackmail purposes.

“Take a look at this.” Gabe pulled up several screens and an arrest report. “The guy with the molotov cocktail in the picture, identified as Hone Ngata? Probably not him. He has, I swear to you, an identical twin brother. Kai Ngata, age 28 with an arrest record as long as my arm.”

Ana leaned forward to get a closer look. Gabe turned, looking at her from just a few inches away. “You smell like blueberries.”

“And if your hand moves one inch towards your tablet or any other photo-taking device I’ll have your balls,” Ana said distractedly. She moved back, a frown taking over her face. “Did he sound legitimate? The good brother?”

“As far as I can tell. He sounds pretty stifled by family, I doubt he’d have the guts to do anything to get out from under them.”

“Hmph. Did Jesse think we should look into anyone?”

“Yeah, actually. William, Atkins’ assistant. I looked him up under his full name, William Richards, but nothing popped. I asked Davila to do a deeper dive, she’ll get on it when she wakes up.”

“All right. You are good until three?” Ana asked.

Gabe nodded. “Go wash your face before you scare the techies.” With a dismissive sound, Ana went back into the bathroom. Gabe looked back at the screen. The camera showed Jesse sitting in bed reading, his roommate nowhere to be seen. Listening closely provided the sounds of a shower running.

“Jesse. Everything okay? The twin story checks out, Ana and I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“Yeah. Not sure how much all you listened to, but he seems to be just what he looks like, this sweet sheep farmer,” Jesse said quietly.

“You all right?” Gabe asked, frown clear in his voice. “You sound down.”

“I’m fine. Just kind of depressin’, this guy about my age who’s still tied down by the expectations of his parents. Can’t even get a date for fear of disappointin’ them.”

“Mmm. Well, worry less, sleep more. Everyone is doing a quick sound check at eight am tomorrow, and then the talent portion starts right at nine. I’m on ‘til three tonight then Ana takes over, we’ll both be there for you tomorrow morning.”

“Copy,” Jesse muttered, just as Hone was coming back into the room.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” he asked.

“Nah, just talkin’ to myself,” Jesse said with a smile. “I think I’m goin’ to turn in. Turn off the lights when you’re done, okay?” Hone agreed, and Jesse set his book down, laying down with a sigh.

Gabe listened to Jesse’s breaths slow into the rhythms of sleep, and wondered when the bomb would come.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next morning, Gabe and Eulert stopped by Jesse’s room. He came out, looking like...well, looking more like his usual self than he had in days. Chaps, serape, hat, even that idiotic belt buckle. The only concessions to the competition were the tight designer jeans, beautifully tooled boots, and the slim-fitting button up that moved like it might be silk.

“Dare I ask?”

“Nope. Just let it happen, boss.”

Gabe shrugged. Even if whatever Jesse was doing wasn’t great, the previous bits from the night before were strong enough to make it seem like he could be a legitimate top five winner. They made their way to the stage, where Jesse had to go on and stand for thirty seconds while they adjusted light levels before they hustled him off in favor of the next contestant. This time Jesse would be somewhat in the middle of the pack.

Eulert and Gabe stood off to the side of the stage, watching as the talent portion got started. Kazakhstan did a set of bodybuilding poses, England drew a portrait of one of the judges, and France sang an aria. Everyone was incredibly talented, and Gabe was starting to get nervous. It really was a shame that Jesse couldn’t do trick shooting, that would have been something to -

“What the...are those sheep?” Gabe interrupted his own thoughts to ask incredulously as hooves clattered on the stage.

“Contestants perform whatever they are talented at, and this can cover a wide range of possibilities. There was a glassblower a few years back, with his own small forge. Lit the curtains on fire but he made a lovely vase,” Eulert said calmly.

Hone came out on stage, dressed like a farmer with a luxury brand budget. He gave a short speech about the importance of sheep and wool to the economy and national identity of New Zealand, and then proceeded to shear the sheep. Gabe found himself unexpectedly impressed. Sheep were far larger than he thought they were, and Hone controlled them easily, taking off large, heavy strips of wool with his shears. In a few short minutes the sheep were much smaller with just clean white fuzz covering them, and there was a pile of wool next to Hone that was as big as he was. The applause was speckled with laughter, but enthusiastic.

Gabe was so preoccupied by the sheep leaving that he missed Jesse coming out on stage. He sat on a stool in the center, with a familiar looking guitar slung over his shoulder. Gabe cocked his head in interest. He’d seen the guitar many times before hanging up on Jesse’s wall, but had always assumed that it was for decoration, not that Jesse actually used it.

Jesse hit a couple strings, making sure of the tuning, before nodding to himself. He leaned down a bit to the microphone that was positioned in front of the sound hole. “This is [Red Pony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSh-YsyjpXk),” he said, before leaning back and settling on the stool.

The piece he played was odd, not like anything Gabe had really heard before. It started with some strange chords, open and surreal. Then Jesse bent his head down and his nimble fingers, so adept at causing death and destruction with a weapon in them, picked out a rapid melody. Despite the speed, the whole thing sounded melancholy. Gabe found himself wondering when he learned to play guitar, when he practiced. The piece rolled on, never really settling as it twined back and forth. Gabe knew he should be watching the wings, watching the staff and the judges, but he couldn’t take his eyes off this unfamiliar version of Jesse, so close to the man he knew and yet so far.

A final few delicate chords that reverberated in the empty air, and then a wave of applause washed over everything. Jesse raised his head, blinking at the audience he couldn’t see due to the bright spotlights covering everything up. He gave a final smile and wave, slinging his guitar over his shoulder neck down like a gun, and walked off stage.

Jesse kept walking until he ran into Gabe, burying his face in the other man’s shoulder. “Don’t make me do that again,” he mumbled into the fabric. Gabe stroked his shoulder, could feel the anxious sweat that had soaked all the way through to the serape.

“You did great, kid,” he said quietly. “Just do it again tomorrow and you’re golden.”

“Mmph,” was Jesse’s only answer. Gabe wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, rubbing gently as Jesse breathed into his throat. Gabe told himself that they were in public, that he was comforting an anxious coworker. It sort of worked.

“Good work,” Eulert said brusquely. “You are free until four, then I will come to prepare you for the swimsuit portion. Drink at least a liter of water between now and then and nothing else. No sodium, no carbohydrates. Have some protein if you are feeling faint, plain hard boiled eggs are best. Exercise if you can to swell your muscles.”

Jesse stepped back from Gabe, making a face, but nodded. “I’ll see if I can go for a run, get a couple of the guys to go with me. Maybe complainin’ will help them open up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gabe agreed, and they all went their separate ways.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe wandered into the suite at ten minutes to five, nodding at Ana sitting at the desk. “Hear anything from Jesse?”

She shook her head. “He got together a group of about ten to work out with, but everyone was so nervous about the swimsuit competition tonight that no one was willing to talk.” She checked the clock. “Speaking of which, I should get down there - they’re going to start in just a few.” Ana patted Gabe on the head on her way out the door. “Try not and drool too much, _habibi_.” Gabe tried to swipe at her arm but she was gone before he could touch her.

The swimsuit portion appeared to be fairly close to the regular suit portion: competitors were called up and announced, they paused on the dais and smiled, and then left. Once again Jesse was at the very end thanks to alphabetical order.

As the contestants strutted around, Gabe saw that Eulert had in fact been correct as to what he stated was in fashion. Most of the men sported very small bathing suits that left virtually nothing to the imagination. There were a few exceptions from more conservative countries, but as a whole everyone was bronzed, hairless, and shining with oil.

By the time Jesse finally came across the stage, Gabe had figured that he was immune to all the skin on display.

Apparently not.

The suit that Eulert had found for Jesse did come down nearly to his knees, but it was absolutely skin tight and hid nothing. Most of the competitors’ suits were black, for good reason. Under the bright lights, the lighter blue of Jesse’s suit showed every line and bulge, of muscles and everything else. The waistline was so low it was practically a groinline, making the extent of Jesse’s hair removal clear. There was a loud wolf whistle as Jesse stepped up to the dais, and Gabe saw his smile quirk at the corners as he recognized it as Ana.

Just a few minutes later it was over, contestants dispersing in a sea of glistening skin and carefully styled hair. Jesse muttered over the com that he would get changed and head up to the command center. They hadn’t had time to all get together and analyze, and this was the perfect opportunity.

Jesse and Ana came in to the command center twenty minutes later, Jesse’s hair still damp from a shower. They sat around the desk covered with tablets and papers.

“I feel like we’ve been going through this dog and pony show with nothing to show for it. Does anyone have feelings about anyone? Evidence would be helpful, but I’ll go with a gut instinct.” Gabe said.

“William, the assistant,” Jesse immediately said. “He gives me the creeps. I’m not threatened by him, obviously, but there’s somethin’ about him that rubs me the wrong way.”

Gabe turned in his chair. “Davila, you sent me the info on him?”

“Yessir.”

He tapped at his tablet, bringing it up. “There doesn’t seem to be much. No criminal record, nothing other than a high school diploma and college degree from a low ranked local university.”

Jesse was frowning and shaking his head. “Nah, I just can’t believe this guy doesn’t have some kind of record. Not the way he looks at everyone. You don’t get like that without at minimum some misdemeanors under your belt.”

“Have you talked with the other competitors about him?” asked Ana. “I’m sure some of them have been working the pageant circuit for years, and you know how gossip spreads.”

Leaning back in his chair, Jesse linked his fingers behind his head. It was strange seeing his arm without the Deadlock tattoo, but the industrial-strength makeup that Eulert used was holding strong. “How much money do we have for incidentals? Cash on hand, I mean.”

Gabe and Ana looked at each other and shrugged. “Nothing specific, but I have one of the emergency cards. I could get five hundred euros before I have to start justifying anything. Why?”

A slow smile spread over Jesse’s face. “Get me that five hundred, and I’ll get you some gossip.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“America, what do you think you’re doing?” the tone of voice was half amazed, half chastising.

“I think I’m havin’ some pizza and beer, Canada, what does it look like?” Gabe watched through the pin camera as Jesse set down a large pizza and a six-pack on the floor of the gym. He was surrounded by a growing circle of competitors, all salivating and looking guilty over doing so in their workout clothes. Jesse opened the pizza box and there was an audible gasp at the greasy, cheesy contents.

Jesse grabbed a slice and Gabe could hear him chewing away. “Oh Jesus, yes. I haven’t had solid food or salt in days. This is fuckin’ amazing.”

“There’s still another day of competition!” someone hissed.

“So? I’ve done the swimsuit shit, I don’t need to have the perfect hard body anymore. I’m having a goddamn beer.” Jesse popped the cap off with his ring, and took a long, audible drink. He held the bottle out, waving it temptingly back and forth. “Any takers?”

Germany broke first. “Give me that.” He drained the bottle in two large swallows, looking near post-orgasmic as he did so. “Oh, _mein Gott_. It’s been too long.” Like a dam breaking everyone dove for the remaining pizza and beer.

“Hey, England,” Jesse called out. A blond man looked up from the pizza he was chomping on. “You’re local. Where’s the closest bar in walkin’ distance?”

-x-x-x-x-x-

It was of course a gay bar, given who the competitors were and what bars they would know. There were flashing lights and dancers in cages, the shot boys wore even less than the contestants in the swimsuit portion, and Jesse’s borrowed money flowed freely. After having been trapped in strict workout regimens and stricter diets, the various gentlemen of the Worldwide Scholarship Initiative cut loose in a way rarely seen outside of fraternities during rush week and football riots.

Jesse rationed his alcohol, keeping a drink that was more soda than bourbon at hand. Once everyone was properly lubricated, he brought up William, making sure to slur his words just a tad.

“Anyone know what’s up with Atkins’ creepy assistant? How’d he even get a job like this with a nasty personality like that?”

Singapore hiccuped with laughter. “Nepotism, America. It’s all damn nepotism.”

Both Gabe and Jesse’s ears perked up. “What d’you mean?” Jesse asked, trying not to sound too curious.

“Didn’t you know?” Venezuela asked. “Before he was William Richards, god knows where he got that name, he was William Atkins. He’s Ellen’s spawn.”

“Davila, look into William Atkins,” Gabe snapped out before turning his attention back to the screen.

Singapore snorted. “I always thought that Ellen must be so disappointed in how he turned out. I’m sure that she wanted her own perfect little competitor to groom for the stage, but he failed at that too.”

“Oh?” Jesse asked. “How?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know, given who you’re working with. Didn’t you do your research?”

“Huh? What are you talkin’ about?”

“Your coach, fool. Eulert. William was his last competitor before you, years and years ago.” Singapore said as he downed another shot.

“I thought that the contestant lost because of the winner being some perfect child-savin’ hero.”

“Pssh. Those are a dime a dozen here, right, Afghanistan?” A beautiful man shoving a mozzarella stick in his mouth waved a hand. “Bahiri’s curing children of cancer right now, but it’s not a guarantee that he’ll win.” The man’s face fell and Singapore flapped a dismissive hand. “Get over it, you know you flubbed your concerto. No, William lost because he was a disaster. Couldn’t walk a straight line, didn’t bother getting in shape enough, gave horrible answers, and nearly cried on stage when he messed up during his talent portion. Eulert wasn’t blacklisted because of the meltdown, he was blacklisted because he obviously didn’t kick William into the shape he needed to.”

“Interesting,” Jesse said quietly. Singapore wandered off with a bellow for more shots, and his seat was taken by Hone.

“Thanks for bringing us all out, Joel,” he said. “This isn’t something I get to do at home, and it’s nice to be surrounded by supportive people.”

Gabe heard the smile in Jesse’s voice. “I’m glad you get to have it here, then. I admit, this isn’t really my scene, either.”

A snort of laughter at Jesse’s side, revealed to be Canada. “Well, that’s obvious.”

The pin view shifted as Jesse squared his shoulders. “Care to explain what you mean by that, friend?”

Canada laughed, his lumberjack-like beard bristling as he gestured expansively with his beer. “You kidding me? It’s clear that _none_ of this is your scene. I doubt you’ve ever walked a runway before, you put on the most covering swimsuit you could find, and your talent costume couldn’t be more of a manly-man stereotype if you tried. You’re smart enough not to be rude to everyone’s face, but it’s clear you have a problem with it all.”

“I’m - I’m not…” Jesse floundered, clearly caught off guard. “I’m not fuckin’ homophobic or anything, I have a goddamn boyfriend!”

“Assuming you’re talking about that daddy type you latched on to after your talent bit? Sure, but he’s hot enough even straight boys would fuck that one. I’m not talking about what you stick your dick into, I’m saying that you look down on everyone that bothers to challenge your view of masculinity.”

Hone reached out and put a comforting hand on Jesse’s arm before he could answer. “Not everyone has everything figured out, even at our age,” he said quietly. “All of us have room to grow.”

Canada walked off with a final raised eyebrow, and the camera moved a bit as Jesse sank back in his seat. “You okay?” Hone asked.

“Yeah, just...just tired. I think I’m gonna head back. You want to come with, or you stayin’?” The two men made their way out of the club, and Gabe tuned them out in favor of going over to Davila and Lee.

“Tell me what you’ve found,” he said grimly.

“It sounds like Agent McCree was right with his instinct, sir. William Atkins has multiple summary offences and a few indictable ones. Mostly petty crimes - a bit of theft, indecent exposure, that kind of thing. After a statutory rape incident when he was twenty, he was kicked out of his university. That was when he changed his surname to Richards, his mother’s middle name. He managed to stay fairly clean since then, at least on paper. It’s likely that his mother’s money has covered up a great deal, though.”

“Any connection with Talon or the Citizens?”

“Talon no, but Citizens yes. He was arrested under the name William Atkins at a Citizens protest - on the side of the Citizens, mind you - a few months ago, after the bombing at Fire Island. He reportedly made multiple violent threats with hate speech.”

“Which would likely be homophobic, given the protest,” Gabe murmured. “Anything else?”

Jesse came on the com before Davila could answer. Gabe held up a hand to pause her. “Gabe? You in the command center?”

“Yeah. Come on in.” A minute later, Jesse came in. His left cheekbone was smudged with glitter, and his hair looked like he’d been running his hands through it. “Find anythin’?”

“A whole lot.” Gabe gave Jesse the rundown on William, his face growing angrier as he listened. “Looks like he’s our man. And with access to Atkins - who may well be in on it, too - and the whole place, it’s goin’ to be a bitch to figure out what he’s got planned.”

Gabe opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by Ana coming in, talking to her tablet. “Yes, they’re all here. Give me a moment while I bring you up.” A moment later, Jack’s face was on the screen in front of them.

“The op is over.”

“ _What?_ ” Jesse and Gabe asked in unison.

“Overwatch did a raid on a warehouse in Gdańsk, expecting a low-level Talon enclave. What they found was the Citizens’ headquarters. Paraphernalia and plans from all of the bombings, dismantled omnics with half-built bombs in them, pretty much everything that we’ve been looking for. Everyone is in custody and has been relatively willing to talk.”

“But what about the threats to the competition?” Gabe asked.

“There wasn’t any evidence of plans for the competition. It’s likely that it was a copycat, someone who wanted their country’s representative to win,” Jack said firmly.

Gabe shook his head. “The whole reason we thought this threat was credible in the first place was mentions in the letter about the previous bombings, information that hadn’t been released to the public. To me that says that there is still a threat here, copycat or not. Specifically Atkins’ assistant, William. It turns out that he’s her son, and a former disgraced competitor who has ties to the Citizens.”

“Atkins, too,” Jesse broke in. “You might not have been listenin’, it was on the way back, but Hone heard from Venezuela that even though this has been Atkins’ baby for years, the ratings are on a downtrend and there’s less interest. The organization is takin’ steps to force her out, get younger blood in.”

Jack made a dismissive movement. “Beauty queen gossip.”

“It’s good intelligence!” Jesse protested.

“We have who did this, agents. The op is over. Ana, get everything packed up. You can be out of there by midnight.”

Jesse squared his shoulders. “Permission to stay and see this out, Commander.”

Tilting his head, Jack narrowed his eyes. “I can put you on vacation time, if this is something you really feel warrants it.”

“I do.”

“Fine. You won’t have backup, so be smart about things. Let us know when you’re back on duty.”

“I’m staying as well.”

“Gabe…”

“No, Jack. I know you think this is wrapped up but I’m positive it’s not. I still think everyone here is in danger.”

Jack crossed his arms, and he and Gabe locked eyes for a good minute. Jack caved first. “Fine. We’re still getting out, you and Jesse are on your own. Don’t cause any diplomatic incidents, Ana won’t be there as our representative to smooth them over.”

“Fine.”

“Morrison out.” The screen went blank. The room was quiet, the techs paused as they waited for their commanding officers to tell them what to do.

“Okay, pack up. We need to be in the air before too long,” Ana finally said.

As Ana continued to talk to the techs, Jesse turned to Gabe. He stepped a little too close, reached out and gripped Gabe’s forearm in his broad hand. The room suddenly felt very small. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Gabe just shook his head. “I know Jack thinks this is over, but it’s not. There’s just too much coincidence with William and everything, and even the other competitors seem to think something shady is going on. And that letter...Jack’s being too hasty.”

“Still. Thank you.” Jesse took a step back, and Gabe felt like he could breathe a little easier. “I’m feelin’ a bit twitchy, think I’m going to try and work some of the energy out.”

“Keep your com in and broadcasting for the time being, I’m sure I’ll be in touch tonight. The final five results are at ten tomorrow, with the final talent portion and interview at two.”

Jesse nodded and left. Gabe sat and wrote down everything he could think of, every theory plausible and not, as the room was dismantled around him. He paused in his typing as he heard Jesse call out over the com:

“Eulert! Where are you going?” Gabe tapped at his tablet, bringing Jesse’s pin camera up. Eulert had his rolling suitcase behind him, with a suit bag draped over an arm.

“I’m leaving, Jes- Joel. Mr. Morrison called, and informed me my services were rendered complete.”

“But, there’s still a day of competition left! More talent, more judging…” As much as Jesse professed to dislike the Frenchman, he was sounding increasingly panicked at the idea of competing without him.

“It’s nothing you haven’t done before. Repeat your talent just as you did today, and answer the interview questions with a minimum of profanity. The makeup for your arm and the products you need are all in your room. I’m sure you will be fine.” A pause, and Eulert held out the suit bag. “This is for you. For the final interview.”

Jesse took it, hesitantly. “A suit?”

“Indeed. A very nice one.” Eulert paused again, looking Jesse over with a practiced eye, one backed by some emotion Gabe couldn’t quite parse out. “Jesse...no matter what happens tomorrow morning, you should know that you have come very far. You should be proud of that.”

“What do you mean, what happens tomorrow? I thought I was guaranteed a top five position.”

“Ms Atkins was contacted by Mr Morrison about the...operation being over with, and said that although you may still compete, you are no longer guaranteed a position in the final.”

Oh hell. That was going to make things harder.

“I...Gabe and I are staying on, even though Morrison said not to. We both think there’s somethin’ still happening. I need to get into that top five. You know Atkins, can’t you convince her?”

Eulert gave a bitter laugh. “We know each other, yes. That quite definitely does not mean we like each other. Any support I gave you would only be to your detriment. You’ve done well, Jesse. And Mr Morrison sounds convinced that there is nothing to worry about. Perhaps you should just go home, if you do not make the top five.”

“You’re telling me to give up?”

“No, I am telling you that you do not need to be here if the danger has passed.” Eulert looked down for a moment, before looking up to meet Jesse’s eyes. “Despite this not being anything you are accustomed to, one cannot say you did not try your hardest, here. I’d like to think that if I had a son, I daresay I’d hope he might be a little like you.”

Through the camera, Gabe could see Jesse’s fingers tighten on the bag.

“Of course any son of mine would know what a proper haircut was and how to shower well - “ Jesse snorted - “but your heart. It is a good one, Jesse McCree. Take care of it. Don’t worry about the competition, and consider leaving.” With a final pat to Jesse’s shoulder, Eulert walked off and out into the London night.

Jesse gave a sigh and opened the door to his room. Gabe turned back to his tablet. The night was far from over.


	3. Chapter 3

“Gabriel.”

“Mmm?”

“You need to leave,” Ana said gently.

Gabe rubbed at the marks on his cheek from where he had dozed off leaning on his folded arms at the table. “Why?”

“Jack cancelled the room reservation. They want us out of here by 11 pm so they can clean.” Gabe looked around, and the suite was empty but for a few of his scattered things.

“Well, hell. I’ll try and see if there’s a spare room here, I guess.”

Ana was already shaking her head. “I checked to see if I could grab you something, but they’re all booked up for tonight thanks to the competition. Even this room, as soon as we get out.”

Gabe stretched, hearing his back crack. “I’ll crash on Jesse’s floor, I guess. The roommate already thinks we’re together, it won’t be that much of a stretch.”

“If you think that’s best.” Ana’s tone was suspiciously even.

“What exactly do you mean by that, Ana?”

She tapped her nails against the table for a moment. “Just be careful. With him and yourself, all right?”

“We’ll be safe. We’re both armed, even though we aren’t quite as armored as usual - “

“That’s not what I meant, Gabriel.” Ana stood, shoving a last few papers in her bag. “He’s been pining for awhile. Don’t jerk him around.”

Gabe felt like he had missed a large chunk of the conversation. “Ana, what are you talking about?”

She leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head. “Take off the hat, dear. You look like an old man trying too hard. I’ll watch the broadcast from headquarters. Keep in touch, and if it all goes bad I’ll see what I can send out, Jack aside, yes?”

Pulling his knit hat off, Gabe scowlingly tucked it in a jacket pocket. Trying too hard at what? His hat was fine. As the door closed behind Ana he packed his few things away in his duffel, and slung it over his shoulder. He needed to find Jesse.

Switching his com back on to active listening mode, he heard strange noises, rushing and bubbling. After a minute, he identified it as water. Jesse said he was going to work out, he must be at the pool. Thank god the coms were waterproof, at least. As Gabe made his way down the stairs, he heard Hone’s voice.

“It’s late, Joel. You’re sure you should be swimming after drinking alcohol?”

“I’m fine. I didn’t drink much, I don’t like a fuzzy head in places I don’t know. What are you doin’ wandering around?”

Hone sounded sheepish. “Ryan, um. Singapore, invited me out for a nightcap.”

“He’s kind of an asshole, Hone.”

“I know, but.” There was a pause as Hone seemed to consider his words and Gabe pushed open the outer hotel doors. “I don’t get to make mistakes, at home. I don’t even get the chance to. Maybe he’ll be an asshole, or maybe it’ll be fun. Or both. I get to find that out, here.”

Gabe rounded the corner of the hotel and spotted Hone sitting by the edge of the pool, Jesse in the water looking up at him. Hone caught sight of Gabe.

“It looks like maybe you’ll want the room to yourself anyways,” Hone said, amusement in his voice.

Jesse looked over and saw Gabe, giving a wave of acknowledgement. “I don’t want to kick you out of your own room. If you want to come back for any reason, whether he’s a jerk or not, I swear we’ll keep it proper.”

“Don’t worry about me. Spend time with your boyfriend.” Hone walked by Gabe, giving a friendly nod as he passed by.

Gabe let his heavy bag hit the ground and sat down next to the pool with a faint grunt. “The command center rooms got cancelled and everything else is booked. If you don’t mind, I’ll crash on your couch tonight.”

Jesse shook his head, wet hair flinging tiny droplets onto Gabe’s pants. “Of course I don’t mind. Here, sit a spell and relax. There’s nothin’ we can do for the moment, so let’s enjoy the fact we’re at a nice hotel.”

Gabe smiled a bit. “All right.” He unlaced his boots, tucking his socks inside and setting them back on the grass. Rolling his pant legs up to the knees, he let his feet dangle in the water. There were lights in the pool, and he watched the refracted light ripple over his skin. Gabe looked up to see Jesse eyeing his leg thoughtfully.

“The cost of the electronics I have on me right now is more than your last bounty. Pull me in and they never find your body,” Gabe said conversationally.

Jesse gave a fake gasp. “Gabe! I would never!”

“Liar,” Gabe said, fondness in his voice audible.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jesse resting his head on folded arms, his elbow just brushing Gabe’s knee. His head was tilted down, enough that Gabe couldn’t read his expression. Gabe’s eyes kept trying to venture below the water, to see Jesse’s body through the disguising moving lights and water. He cleared his throat, trying to distract himself. “You okay?”

Jesse turned his head so it faced Gabe, droplets of water shining on the tips of his eyelashes. “You listen to everythin’ in the club?”

“For the most part. I tuned out in favor of research when you started walking back.”

Jesse was quiet for a minute, breath making small ripples on the water. “I keep thinking about what Canada was goin’ on about.”

Gabe leaned back a bit on his hands. “He was a bit of a dick about it, but he wasn’t wrong. This all has been an unfamiliar world that we’ve had to navigate.”

“Yeah, but,” Jesse sighed. “I dunno. I guess I’ve just always seen myself as very live-and-let-live, you know? Acceptin’ of everyone. I don’t like the idea of someone thinkin’ I’ve got a problem with them because of who they are.”

Gabe thought about how to phrase what he wanted to say. “You’ve always lived...outside of traditional society, Jesse. Deadlock and then Blackwatch, dating back to when you were a kid. You’ve never had to navigate the real world, deal with the regular populace the way everyone else does. The way your fellow competitors do. From what I’ve seen, and mind you I’ve always tried not to butt into agents’ personal lives, you just...like what you said. Live and let live, you’ve never really attached any labels to yourself. Which is perfectly fine, but it also means that you’ve never been looked down on because of it.”

“I’ve had my share of fistfights because of who I’ve been sleepin’ with.”

“That’s not what I mean, exactly. It’s more...when you’re just trying to live your life, but everyone thinks they know everything about you because of one little thing. Want to know how enjoyable it was for Jack and I to be openly gay in the army? Not pleasant. It’s how we got to be friends, actually, by defending each other. I’m not saying you haven’t had invective thrown at you, but you have to see the difference in how you live and how, say, Hone does. The poor guy can’t even date.”

Jesse laughed a bit. “Hopefully he’ll be able to enjoy himself tonight.” Gabe made a noise of assent, then a noise of concern as Jesse stretched his arms out.

“Hey. Take a look at your arm.” Gabe gripped Jesse’s wrist and turned it over. Where the makeup was, covering the tattoo, it had started to separate out into puddles of pigment. “I think the pool water might be doing something to it. Let’s get you out before someone sees.”

Gabe grabbed his shoes and socks, slinging his bag strap over his shoulder. Jesse levered himself out of the pool, and...oh god. He was wearing the tiny, tiny swimsuit that Eulert had previously wanted him to wear. It covered little, the muscles in Jesse’s thighs causing the edges of the leg fabric to roll up even farther. Gabe gave a strangled cough, thankful for skin tone and the darkness of the area to cover the heat in his cheeks. “So you, uh. Decided to wear the swimsuit, huh.”

Jesse shrugged, muscle moving under shining wet skin. “I don’t mind if there’s no one around to see. Just didn’t want to be up in front of everyone like that.”

“I’m around to see.”

A white flash in the dark, as Jesse grinned. “You don’t count.”

Gabe faintly smiled at that and followed Jesse into the hotel room, trying to look anywhere but at the vista of skin in front of him. “You have something to remove the makeup, presumably?”

Jesse started to nod, then closed his eyes in annoyance. “Ah, shit. Eulert did. He left me the makeup over there, but I didn’t see any remover.” He started to dry himself off with a towel.

“Hold on a minute.” Gabe went to the bathroom, flicking the light on and rooting around in the well-stocked medicine cabinet. Grabbing a bottle of baby oil and a box of tissues, he waved them at Jesse as he came out. “We’re good. Take a seat and turn around.”

Setting a towel down on the bed so he wouldn’t get the it wet, Jesse sat on the edge of the mattress. Gabe flicked the desk lamp on, a small bit of brightness in an otherwise darkened room. Damping down the tissue with the oil, he began to carefully swipe at the dissolving makeup on Jesse’s left shoulder blade, slowly revealing a sketchy version of Peacekeeper.

“How d’you know how to remove makeup?” Jesse asked, his voice soft in the quiet room.

“Camouflage paint, back in the day.” Silence for a minute. “Also high school basketball. They painted our faces up.”

“Really, now.” Gabe could hear the smile, even if he couldn’t see it. “High school athlete Gabe. Can’t quite picture it.”

“I was far more boring as a kid than you all think I was.” Gabe tapped at Jesse’s back. “Lean forward.”

Jesse stretched down, wrapping his arms around his knees. Gabe could see the faint bumps of his vertebrae in between the wings of muscle on either side. He gently began wiping along Jesse’s lower back, just above the waistline of the swimsuit. _Thank you for coming_ the tattoo read, the script contained in a ribbon. _Only Jesse,_ Gabe thought to himself.

“Turn.” The warm light from the desk lamp made Jesse’s skin glow, and Gabe recited Blackwatch budget statistics in his head as he swept the tissue over Jesse’s chest, over his ribs. He could feel Jesse’s eyes on him, gaze steady.

Jesse’s left arm lay across Gabe’s thigh, turned upwards as Gabe cleaned the makeup off of the Deadlock logo, black skull and wings revealed bit by bit. Gabe held his arm close to the elbow, turning it this way and that. He wiped up the last bits of pigment, then wiped the oil off with a fresh tissue. “All clean,” he said quietly, and made the mistake of looking up.

They were sitting unexpectedly close together, and at this distance Gabe could see every detail of Jesse’s warm eyes that were looking right at him - the thick lashes, the striations in his irises, his pupils as they got bigger when he focused. “You keep lookin’ at me like that,” Jesse said, and his breath was warm against Gabe’s face.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re lookin’ at me for the first time.”

It was quiet enough that Gabe could hear the water washing against the sides of the pool outside. He licked suddenly dry lips, and didn’t miss Jesse’s eyes moving down to follow the movement. “Sometimes when you’ve known someone for a long time, you stop seeing them. Stop seeing the changes over time.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt?”

“Not contempt. Complacency, perhaps. And then sometimes things go a little off kilter, and you start to see them again.”

“And what do you see now?” Jesse’s voice was steady, but Gabe could feel the faint tremble of his fingers where they still rested against his thigh.

 _Just be careful_ , Ana’s voice said in the back of his head, but the warmth of Jesse’s arm on his thigh made it seem so very unimportant. All the objections that Gabe’s own inner commander was making faded away as Gabe leaned forward those few inches and caught Jesse’s lips with his own.

There was a seconds’ pause where Jesse didn’t move and a thousand worst-case scenarios flew through Gabe’s brain. Then Jesse made a whining noise in the back of his throat and surged forward, nearly knocking Gabe backwards before he put an arm back to steady himself. Jesse’s mouth was warm and wet and frantic on his own, lips seemingly trying to reach as much as possible before someone made him stop. Gabe found himself smiling against the kiss, bringing his hands up to Jesse’s face to push him back just a bit.

“No, no,” he whispered into Jesse’s mouth. “Like this.” He tilted Jesse’s head just a bit to the left, kissed him slow and filthy, parting Jesse’s lips and taking his time as he tasted him. Jesse collapsed forward into Gabe a little, who wrapped a stabilizing arm around his lower back. They both made small, unhurried movements as they learned each others’ mouths, and soon Jesse was sitting in Gabe’s lap, legs folded on up either side.

Jesse’s hands slid from Gabe’s face to his shoulders, pushing his suit jacket off. Gabe reached behind him to get it where it was caught around his wrists, tossing it to the side of the bed once he was free. Jesse pulled up on Gabe’s t-shirt, grunting “Off, off,” into Gabe’s ear when he didn’t move his arms up fast enough for Jesse’s liking. The shirt was thrown somewhere, but Gabe didn’t pay attention in favor of Jesse stroking up and down his sides.

They weren’t kissing anymore, they just had their foreheads pressed together breathing the same air. Jesse just...touched. Moved his fingers over Gabe’s skin, feeling the various scars and dents, the muscles shifting under hairy skin. Gabe’s hands rested on Jesse’s waist, thumbs rubbing small circles over sharp hipbones. He wanted to touch too, but didn’t want to break Jesse’s concentration. Having someone so focused on him was...something else. An intimacy he wasn’t accustomed to. Gabe shifted a bit, and could feel how hard he was in his pants. Jesse’s situation wasn’t any better, the still ridiculously tiny swimsuit hiding nothing.

Jesse leaned down to give Gabe a slow, lingering kiss, then shoved Gabe’s chest hard, leaving him flat on his back with Jesse grinning on top of him. He gave a single, slow roll of his hips before shifting back to undo Gabe’s belt and fly with nimble fingers. Gabe lifted his hips to let Jesse tug his pants off, then collapsed back down with a soft sound when Jesse immediately put a hand on his underwear-covered dick. He rubbed once, twice, then leaned down and mouthed at the flesh underneath the fabric that was being stretched to its limit.

He pulled the underwear off quickly, shoving his own swimsuit down and kicking it off just a moment later, but instead of going anywhere near Gabe’s cock he veered off to the side and licked across a hipbone. Gabe groaned in frustration and felt Jesse smile before he nipped at the thin flesh covering bone. Moving to the other side, Jesse paused before nudging at Gabe’s hip with his chin. “I thought you didn’t have any tattoos.”

“I don’t,” Gabe said, before propping himself up on his elbows and looking down at Jesse.

...oh. “I don’t think of that as a tattoo,” he said as Jesse’s mouth traced over the 0024 and barcode that were inked on the top of his hip, the first digit nearly covered by pubic hair.

“Then what do you think of it as?” murmured Jesse into Gabe’s skin.

 _A brand._ “A label.” Jesse heard the unsaid emotion in Gabe’s voice and moved on in the most efficient way he knew how, swallowing Gabe’s cock down before Gabe could even process it. His hands knotted in the sheets, knowing that if he touched Jesse’s head he’d start fucking hard into that perfect mouth and not be able to stop. And that...would be something for another day. Not tonight. Tonight was slow and easy and -

“Jesse, fuck, stop,” Gabe gasped, fingers fumbling out of the sheets and onto Jesse’s hair. He pulled off obediently, grinning up at Gabe and licking a slow line up the side of his dick when Gabe’s eyes found him. “Lil’ too much?”

Gabe rolled his eyes and tugged at the hand that was tracing patterns on Gabe’s hip. Jesse slid his way up, making sure to drag his own dick over Gabe’s skin, leaving a shining trail of precome that cooled in the hotel room air. Once finally at eye level, Jesse leaned over to bite gently at Gabe’s jaw. “Can I ride you?”

Threading a hand into Jesse’s hair and tugging him over until he could kiss him deeply, Gabe murmured into Jesse’s mouth, “Go right ahead.” Jesse smiled into the kiss, nipping Gabe’s lower lip as he sat up. Reaching over into the nightstand drawer, he pulled out a half-empty bottle of lube. Gabe recognized the label as Overwatch-issue. “Did you steal that from the medbay?”

Jesse’s smile tugged up into a smirk. “They won’t miss it.” He flipped the lid open, but Gabe took it out of his hands.

“Let me.” He pulled Jesse forward, back curved so he could kiss Gabe as he reached a hand back. With arousal clouding his brain, Gabe had totally forgotten about all the primping that Eulert had put Jesse through. He was so smooth back there, fingers gliding along hairless skin until they reached their goal. Jesse opened up beautifully for him, seemingly not even noticing the added fingers as Gabe distracted him with his mouth. “You ready?”

Jesse sat up and back, and took Gabe in so smoothly he didn’t even realize it until Jesse clenched down and an unwilling moan was pulled from deep in Gabe’s chest. “Fuck, Jesse, you didn’t get -”

“You told me SEP killed everything, was that wrong?” Gabe shook his head and Jesse looked smug as he closed his eyes and started to move his hips, a rolling motion that Gabe slid into easily. He took the opportunity to look his fill. Everything was sleek, tan skin, and as Jesse moved the veins leading from his lower abdomen downwards drew Gabe’s eye. He reached over to the lube bottle and poured some out, reaching to wrap a slick hand around Jesse’s length.

His eyes flew open, visibly darkening as he looked dazedly down at Gabe. Gabe gave long, slow pulls that matched Jesse’s rhythm, and it wasn’t long before Jesse was bracing himself with a hand on Gabe’s chest. His breath rasped faster and faster, until he came with a choked-off noise, nails digging into Gabe’s pectoral muscle hard enough to draw blood. The pressure around Gabe’s cock was so good it almost hurt, but he focused on Jesse, working him through the aftershocks.

As soon as he could tell Jesse was done, Gabe rolled them over. Jesse was loose-limbed and sex-drunk below him, pliant body easily accepting the punishing rhythm that Gabe started up. He was so close, felt like he’d been close for days now, and it was the possessive hand that Jesse spread over his back that pushed him over the edge. Gabe slowed as his hips twitched and he pulsed into Jesse’s body, eventually sinking down and catching his breath in the crook of Jesse’s neck. Jesse’s hands lazily scratched through Gabe’s hair, and it was soothing enough that getting up took both physical and emotional effort.

Gabe returned from the bathroom with a damp washcloth, flicking the light off on the way, to find Jesse asleep. He wiped them both clean before pulling the covers up and laying down. Jesse woke up enough to roll over and sling an arm around Gabe, resting his head on Gabe’s upper chest with a sound of contentment. Gabe spared a thought for if Hone would return, deemed it something he didn’t care about, and followed Jesse into sleep.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe wasn’t sure what woke him, but he found himself staring at the dark ceiling above. His side felt cold, and when he reached out a hand Jesse wasn’t there. Rolling over, Gabe saw him sitting on the side of the bed, hands braced on the edge of the mattress. His head hung down a bit, and he seemed to just be staring into space, or maybe the pool just outside the door.

For a minute he looked almost unrecognizable, the cold blue-white light of the pool turning him into a marble statue. The planes of his face were harsh in the shadows, his eyes glinting in pools of darkness. His back was tense, his cock soft in his lap. Of all things, strangely enough, Gabe found himself looking at Jesse’s feet. His toes were long and bony, looking oddly fragile as the tendons shifted with the small movements of Jesse’s body.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was quiet, but it dropped into the silence like an earthquake.

“Why now?” Jesse took a breath before continuing. “Why me? Why here? Is it really me, or…” he gestured to his body, to the changes that had occurred. “This?”

Gabe sighed and scooted down a bit so he could trace a sleepy hand up and down the line of Jesse’s spine. “Jesse, how often have you seen me fall into bed with a pretty face?” He didn’t answer. “How often do you see me fall in bed with anyone, for that matter?” Gabe wasn’t intentionally celibate, but he was a workaholic that was in command of most of the people he knew. His dry spell had lasted most of Jesse’s tenure in Blackwatch.

“I just...don’t know why.” He sounded lost.

“Jesse, you’ve always been.” Gabe paused. “Tempting.” Jesse snorted, smiling a bit for the first time. “But you were a goddamn teenager when you got here. And you’ve been under my command for a long damn time. And I got used to filing you mentally under ‘you can’t have this’. Also you really do need to learn how to wash your hair properly and get some goddamn clothing without burn marks or holes in it, Jesus Christ, kid. If nothing else this all has helped you take a level in maturity.”

“Still not really an answer, Gabe.” There was warmth in his voice, now.

He shifted onto his back, letting a hand rest on Jesse’s hip. “We’re in trouble,” he said quietly. “The Venice aftermath has been...it’s going to hit the media before too long. There’s a good chance that Moira is going to be forced out. Gérard is just barely healed, and…” he shook his head. “It’s been enough for me to reevaluate some things recently. Think about how short life is and what I should really be denying myself.”

Jesse turned, looking at Gabe for the first time. He trailed a hand over his chest, stopping at the nail and tooth marks he’d made. “Denial, hmm? So I’m the cookie at the end of dinner?”

“Something like that.” Gabe let Jesse drape himself over him, let him press short, strong kisses to his mouth. When Jesse’s hips made a smooth, inviting motion, however, Gabe rolled them to the side. “As much as I’d like a second round, you have to be up before too long for the announcement.”

Jesse made a noise of annoyance as he flopped on his back. “I’m not going to place, Gabe. Maybe we shouldn’t go, figure out how to stick around after. Figure out what the hell William has planned.”

Gabe reached over and pulled Jesse against his side. “We need to keep going, follow the plan. And you never know, maybe you will. Now sleep.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Joel? Are you here - oh.” Gabe growled at the intrusion into sleep, and cracked an eye open. Hone was standing near the door, face beet red and trying to look anywhere but at Jesse’s bed.

There was a shifting on Gabe’s chest as Jesse made a move to get up, but Gabe tightened his grip on his shoulder. “Don’t move. Tattoos are out.” Jesse mumbled something Gabe couldn’t make out, and buried his face deeper into Gabe’s shoulder.

Glancing down to see he was just barely covered by the sheet, Gabe looked over at Hone. “Hate to do this in your own room, but would you mind giving us a few minutes to get some clothes on?”

“I’ll go get some breakfast. Do you want anything?” Hone asked politely.

“No thank you, we’ll be out in a few.” As soon as the door shut, Gabe shoved at Jesse before glancing at his tablet. “Wake up. You need to shower and get around, we only have forty five minutes before the announcement.”

Jesse rolled over and stretched, back cracking. He looked beautiful spread out against the white sheets in the morning light, even with his hair a mess and eyes still heavy with sleep. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Gabe’s shoulder. “You could shower with me, you know.”

Enticing as that sounded, Gabe pushed at Jesse until he was half-falling off the bed. “That would only make you even later. Shower. Now, ingrate.” Gabe watched Jesse walk to the bathroom, shamelessly enjoying the movement of muscle under bare skin. Shaking his head at himself, he found his duffel bag, pulling on black pants, a black shirt, his boots, and a shoulder holster under a black hoodie. He strapped another to his ankle, with a knife on the other leg. If the Citizens were going to make a move it would be today, and Gabe wanted all the firepower he could get away with. He made sure to clip the security badge to his chest. No one would question it, it was issued by Atkins herself.

Jesse came out of the bathroom in his underwear, waving his left arm to dry the makeup he’d put on it. He pulled on his suit, turning piece by piece back into the polished pageant contestant. Throwing various hair products into a bag, he pinned on the flag pin. “Let’s go.” He checked his tablet. “Oh lord, let’s really go, I’m goin’ to be late.”

They hurried down the stairs, separating out once they got backstage. Gabe found a box to sit on, turning his com on and pulling out his tablet. He watched as Jesse wove his way around everyone who was already put together, slamming his bag down on a vanity and squinting at the various products inside.

“Joel! Why aren’t you ready?” Hone stood behind him, looking down at Jesse’s wet, unstyled hair in dismay.

“Eulert had to leave. An’ I’m not quite sure what to do with...pomade? The hell is that?”

“Sit down and shut up, cowboy.” Singapore was standing behind him with a hairdryer and a sour look. “When I beat you it’s going to be because I deserve it, not because you got screwed over by your idiot coach.” The area turned into a flurry of activity, with hairdryers, straighteners, and combs being wielded by beautiful, besuited men. In just a few minutes, Jesse looked like he had before, hair polished, suit straightened out, tie perfectly tied.

Gabe watched Jesse’s face, grateful and surprised, reflected in the vanity mirror as he looked around at the other contestants. “Thanks, guys. Really.”

“Just don’t trip out there and make our effort for nothing, eh?” Canada said with a friendly bump to his shoulder. Jesse grinned in response, and got up to follow everyone else out.

Everyone lined up, and Ms Atkins stood at a podium on the left side of the stage. Gabe stood in the wings, watching the screen that showed her face closely. After this they were going to have to figure out what would happen - did the eliminated contestants have to leave right away? Could they stay for the rest of the competition? How could he and Jesse investigate properly if Jesse wasn’t supposed to be there?

He started to pay attention again as the tension in the room suddenly ratcheted up. “...and our first finalist is...Singapore!” That wasn’t a surprise, even though his interview wasn’t great. He just knew the game too well.

The next two were Canada and Afghanistan, neither a big surprise despite how the latter had indeed messed up during his talent portion, as Singapore had pointed out the night before. Next was New Zealand, and Hone’s jaw-dropped look of surprise was almost funny. Jesse clapped a hand to his shoulder as he went by, getting a big smile in exchange.

“And our final contestant is…” If Gabe hadn’t been watching Atkins’ face so closely on the big screen, he would have missed her left eye twitching. “...the United States of America!”

Jesus Christ, Jesse actually made the finals on his own.

Gabe looked at Jesse’s face on the big screen, and if he didn’t know him so well he wouldn’t have seen the complete shock in his eyes hiding behind the practiced smile. It looked like their original agenda was back on.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse being a finalist actually threw a wrench into their changed plans - Gabe had assumed that they would be free to explore backstage, try and get up into the catwalks and see if anything had been planted. Instead now they just had time to grab a quick lunch before Jesse had to get dressed for the talent portion.

While Jesse got dressed, Gabe made a quick call to Ana. He’d messaged her the night before that Eulert had left and Jesse wasn’t guaranteed a finalist position, letting her know how he was likely going to be running things.

“Tell your boy congratulations,” was the first thing she said when she answered.

“He’s not my boy. And I will,” Gabe growled.

“Oh, of course he is. How did the room-sharing go last night?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to answers to, Ana,” Gabe said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers as she laughed delightedly.

“Good. You’re good for each other, and this is a good step for the two of you to take. Just don’t tell Jack right away.”

“Fuck, no. I do have some sense of self-preservation. In any event, is there any way you could have the techs research something for me, off the books?”

“What do you need?”

“There’s something we’re missing, some puzzle piece. Have them look harder at William, and throw in Ellen Atkins too. Everyone’s been tiptoeing around her and it’s not just because she’s the head of all of this. They said she might be forced out, maybe there’s something to do. We don’t have much time, so…”

“I’ll get Davila on it, she knows what to look for.”

“Thanks, Ana. You going to watch the rest?”

“Of course. Stay safe, Gabriel. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Keep me updated. Thank you again.” They both signed off.

Jesse came out of the bathroom, fastening the one side of his chaps to his belt. “That Ana?”

“Yeah. Just asking her to look into a few things.” He looked Jesse over. “You ready?” At his nod, they made their way over to the theatre. With only five contestants left, the talent section would go fairly fast. Jesse would be performing second to last.

Canada was first, with his Cape Breton fiddling followed by Afghanistan with his marimba concerto. Both did well, no major issues. Then came Hone.

“Is that a camel?” Jesse whispered in Gabe’s ear. It was indeed a camel, and Hone proceeded to shave an intricate design into its side with clippers - “I swear he used those same clippers on himself two nights ago” - as Jesse went to fetch his guitar.

“Everything all right?” Gabe asked at Jesse’s frowning face as he tuned up.

“No. I told them she had to be stored at room temperature, but she’s real cold. Not tuning right. I gotta get down to open d minor, and -” a slight twist of a tuning peg, a sound like a melodic pistol shot, and Jesse was yanking his arm back with a curse.

“Fuck.” Jesse examined his arm, and a drop of blood dripped down from a scratch. “Broke a string.”

“Can you still play?” Gabe asked. He didn’t know guitars, other than to listen to.

“If I was playin’ something easier. Not with fingerpickin’.” Jesse sat back on his heels, face dark with frustration.

“Spain was playing a guitar, could you borrow one of his strings?”

“No, and not the guitar either. He plays classical, nylon strings. These are steel. I’d have backups, except Genji was the one that had to pack up my stuff, and he didn’t know to grab any.”

There was the sound of applause, and Hone was coming by them with his camel. “Mr Morricone? Two minutes while they sweep up the stage and then you’re on,” a woman with a headset said to Jesse.

“What are you going to do?” Gabe asked, watching Jesse’s face carefully. Unless Jesse could pull something out of a hat…

The clouds cleared from Jesse’s brow, and he gave Gabe a lopsided smile. The same smile he always got when he was coming up with a bad idea, when he and Genji were about to do something stupid, when he was about to take a risk that he really, really shouldn’t.

“I’ve got an idea, but I’ll need your help.”

“Sure, anything.” Gabe immediately wanted to take the words back when he saw Jesse’s smile sharpen.

“Hey there. I’ve run into some performance issues,” Jesse waggled his guitar with the broken string at the woman with the headset, who giggled. “I’m not goin’ to need the same setup. Could you get me some kind of mic that could be attached to my shirt? I’m goin’ to talk for a bit.”

“Sure, Mr Morricone. Let me see what I can find.” She returned a minute later with a small mic that she clipped on to his shirt. “All set!”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Jesse smiled at her.

She held up a finger to him, before saying, “Okay, Mr Morricone, onstage in 5, 4, 3, 2…” she motioned for Jesse to proceed.

Jesse leaned close to Gabe, covering the mic. “Stay close, wait for me.” He gave Gabe a quick kiss, then was striding on the stage to the sound of applause.

“Hey there, everyone,” he started off, with a smile. “Now I know that I promised you all a guitar performance, but there were some technical issues. I have somethin’ a little different, but I think you’ll maybe learn somethin’ useful.” Jesse stepped closer to the edge of the stage, making eye contact with the judges. “Despite all our progress, we still live in dangerous times. This is especially true if you’re a member of any group that comes under fire for bein’ who they are. As I’m sure y’all have heard, there have been all kinds of attacks recently on the LGBT communities of the world. As a gay man, I find this especially worrying. We can’t always do much about bombs as individuals, but at least we can protect ourselves.”

He walked across the stage a bit, in Gabe’s direction. “I want to show you some basic self defense moves that every person can learn. But I think I’ll need some help from an assistant. Please welcome my friend, Mr Rey… Ray. Ray-Ray, come on out!” Jesse gestured to Gabe, who made slashing gestures with his hands. No fucking way.

At Jesse’s hissed, “Come on,” Gabe frustratedly stripped off his hoodie and unclipped his shoulder holster as fast as he could, leaving it wrapped in the sweatshirt at the edge of the stage. He walked out in his t-shirt, as the audience applauded and Jesse smiled.

“Although I have a bit more experience than most, I guarantee you that anyone in this room can do these moves. I swear. Now, first imagine you’re walkin’ down the street and someone comes at you from the front.” Jesse stood, waiting for Gabe to attack him. Gabe was hit by the sudden, sobering realization that he was going to have to let Jesse _win_.

Fuck.

(Six hundred miles away, Ana Amari hit the speed dial on her tablet without taking her eyes off of the screen in front of her.

“What is it?” Jack’s tired voice answered.

“Jesse McCree is about to kick Gabe’s ass on international television.”

A pause.

Jack’s voice again, this time somewhat distant: “Oxton, what the hell channel is the BBC again?”)

“I think Ray-Ray might need a bit of encouragement…” Jesse said with a smile in his voice. Gabe rolled his eyes at the applause, but reluctantly jogged forward, coming at Jesse with obvious, open arms. Jesse slammed his hand up into Gabe’s face, pulling back just enough to not break his nose.

Jesse was saying something about using the heel of your hand, but Gabe’s eyes were watering and his nose was too painful to pay attention. Wiping his eyes with his sleeve, he looked up to see Jesse glancing at him expectantly.

“Your attacker may also come at you from behind.” He turned his back on Gabe, who was now annoyed. He came at Jesse fast, but the sound of his boots was loud and he let Jesse flip him over his shoulder onto the hard stage. Gabe lay on the floor, catching his breath as the audience applauded enthusiastically. He was going to have to run away once this was over with. Maybe to the Sandwich Islands or something, somewhere there was no Watchpoint for a thousand miles. Because after this? He wasn’t going to be able to face anyone he worked with ever again.

Jesse hauled him up to his feet, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “If you’re not comfortable with all that, it’s fine. Just try and go for the most sensitive spots on the body. If you don’t remember anything else, just remember...to sing. S-I-N-G.”

Oh shit, this was going to be painful.

Gabe came at Jesse from behind, wrapping an arm around his neck. He braced himself, knowing what was coming. “Solar plexus…” Jesse slammed an elbow back into Gabe’s chest. “Instep…” One of those wooden-heeled cowboy boots came down on Gabe’s foot. “Nose…” For the second time in five minutes, Gabe’s nose tried to make friends with the back of his skull. This time, it broke. “Groin!” Jesse’s elbow came back and thankfully veered to the side and hit Gabe’s inner left hip. Not even Jesse was that stupid.

(“If you didn’t record that, I’m firing you.”

“Do I look like an idiot, Jack? Of course I did.”)

“Just sing,” Jesse said with a grin to the raucous applause, and he waved as he helped Gabe limp off stage.

“Thanks for that last one.”

“I can’t damage it if I want it in me later tonight,” Jesse murmured as he handed Gabe his hoodie.

Gabe rolled his eyes in fond exasperation, but his face froze as he felt inside the sweatshirt Jesse gave him.

“My gun is gone.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse set Gabe’s nose with a painful snap - “Sorry, darlin’, I swear I didn’t mean to actually break it” - taping it down with medical tape they found in a first aid kit. They quietly tried to search the area, but it was full of people in headsets and staff members and people in ten types of uniforms. It wasn’t long before someone grabbed Jesse’s arm and said, “Your interview is in forty five minutes, I’d get ready.”

Jesse headed over to the room while Gabe kept looking, talking quietly over the coms as they did so. “It’s not exactly like it’s great that one of my guns is gone, but we’re looking for a bomb. What could someone with a gun do?” Gabe muttered as he opened a door to yet another mop closet. How many of those were there? This was the fourth he’d seen so far.

“Well for starters, you could kill someone,” Jesse drawled as fabric rustled in the background.

“Obviously, but this whole thing is about mass destruction, not single person shootings. Maybe it was just someone who saw me take it off and thought it should be kept safe. A security guard or something.”

“You know that’s about as likely as Torb winnin’ this thing.” He made a sound of frustration. “The note here says to do a full Windsor knot. The hell is that?”

“Get down here and I’ll do it for you.”

“Be there in a sec.”

Gabe turned a corner and - “Eulert?” The Frenchman spun around.

“Mr. Reyes! How good to see you. I hope you are very impressed with Jesse, he is doing quite well.”

“Yeah, he’s doing great, but what are you doing here? Jesse said you left last night.”

“I did,” Eulert said, thin smile on his lips that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I had a few things that I needed to come back and take care of. I won’t be here much longer.”

Gabe frowned. “You really should go. There’s…” He wasn’t sure how much Eulert actually knew about why they were there, and erred on the side of caution. “There’s going to be some things going on, and I wouldn’t want you to get caught in the middle of it. You should finish up.”

“I will. As soon as I can.” Something behind Gabe caught Eulert’s eye, and he walked forward. “William, is that the torch? It’s looking positively tarnished. You need to go and clean it up, yes?” Atkins’ son was holding a velvet pillow with a silver torch handle with a crystal flame on top. “Go on, there’s a dear.”

Eulert turned back to Gabe. “That is the prize, of course. As our contestants are men, it was decided that a crown would be too...gaudy. It is very pretty, though obviously they have become lazy about cleaning it.”

Gabe watched William as he opened a door and slipped inside. Gabe could have sworn that was one of the mop closets, but he’d lost track after so many of them. “I had heard that William was your failed contestant. You two seem to get along well now.”

Eulert gave a very expressive, Gallic shrug. “William is...a failure on many levels, not just as a contestant. But he’s not a bad person, exactly. Just not what he could have lived up to be. We have made our peace over the years.”

“Gabe? Where are you?” Jesse was on the com.

“I’m sorry, but I have to run. Please take my advice and leave as soon as you can.” Gabe gave Eulert’s hand a quick shake, then headed quickly back to the left wing offstage where they had been hanging out before.

Jesse was in an impeccably fitted charcoal suit, complete with waistcoat and an untied oxblood tie that offset his hair and eyes perfectly. Gabe tied his tie quickly, unbuttoning the waistcoat to tuck it underneath. “There. Now you’re put together.”

“We’re runnin’ out of time,” Jesse said quietly, hands resting on Gabe’s chest.

“I know. I bet that if something happens it’ll be during the crowning. I asked Ana to get Davila researching Atkins and William, but I haven’t heard back yet. Just get through the interview, then we have a bit of time before the crowning.”

“Places!” someone yelled out. The other contestants filed past, getting in place to walk on stage. Gabe wrapped his arms tightly around Jesse for just a moment, before pushing him to follow the other contestants. He could practically see him rebuilding his mental walls, until by the end when he got in line he was smiling and nearly indistinguishable from the other contestants in their own dark suits.

Gabe continued to prowl around backstage, making the various tech people nervous, until he heard Atkins say, “And Mr. Morricone…”

Jogging quickly to the edge of the stage, Gabe watched the large screen. “What would you say to those who dismiss this competition as a pageant, something outdated and focused on frivolities?” Gabe could see the very slightest smirk on her chemically-frozen face. He’d bet everything in his wallet that she’d picked that question on purpose. He was feeling more and more like she was involved.

Up on the screen, Jesse’s eyes narrowed the smallest bit. “Well, Ms. Atkins, I’d have to say that I used to be one of them. As you might be able to tell by my, well, everythin’, I’m not someone very comfortable bein’ all dolled up. But I’ve met a lot of great guys here from very different backgrounds who have showed me a lot about the different ways to express yourself an’ your masculinity, and sometimes that involves glitter and those frivolities you mentioned. Still means they’re some of the smartest guys I’ve ever met.” Jesse smiled at the loud round of applause, but didn’t hand the microphone back.

“And I’ve become close to everyone here, I really have. So if anyone ever decided to hurt them, I would make sure to make them pay. In every way possible, to the fullest extent of the law.” There was a moment of awkward silence before Jesse gave his most charming grin. “Thanks, y’all.” Applause.

“Christ.” Gabe muttered to himself as he collapsed back against a pillar for a moment. So close to being perfect, and then Jesse was...Jesse. The contestants streamed past him, and Gabe caught Jesse’s arm as he went by. “We only have half an hour, I’m going up into the catwalks. You keep an eye down here, make sure no one notices. Look for anything suspicious.”

Jesse nodded, and Gabe looked around before quickly climbing up a ladder. The catwalks were dark coated metal that thankfully absorbed Gabe’s footfalls. He surprised a lighting technician, who nearly fell before Gabe grabbed his arm.

“You can’t be up here!” he hissed.

Gabe put a finger to his mouth and fished his security badge out. “I’m checking out all the security. Have you seen anyone up here that shouldn’t be?”

“Other than you, no.”

Gabe slid past him, continuing along the stage from thirty feet in the air. He wasn’t familiar with this particular theatre, but they all were pretty much the same up above and he couldn’t see anything that seemed out of the ordinary. He glanced down and - was that Eulert? Still? He seemed to be arguing with William.

William made a vehement gesture that pulled his baggy suit jacket tight, and there was a disturbingly familiar shape at the back of his pants.

“Jesse,” Gabe hissed. “I’m looking at William and Eulert arguing, and I’m pretty sure William has my gun tucked at the back of his pants.” Gabe looked around, but there was no way down from where he was. He was going to have to get to the edge and take a ladder down. He started walking as quickly and quietly as he could.

“Eulert? I thought he left yesterday.”

“So did I, but I ran into him before the interview portion. Said he had a couple of things to take care of.”

“Competitors, please line up for the crowning!” A voice echoed through the theatre.

“Shit. Go on stage, I’ll take care of this.”

“Are you sure? I can -”

“No, I want you on stage in case something goes bad. Go. I’ve got this, Jesse.” He paused. “And good luck.”

Gabe continued climbing down. Just as his feet hit the floor, his tablet vibrated. Pulling it out, he saw Ana’s name. Tapping to answer, he muttered, “Not a good time, Ana.”

“You need to hear this. ‘Atkins’ is Ellen’s maiden name. She went back to it after getting divorced.”

“Why do I care about this?”

“Because when she was married, she was Ellen Eulert.”

Gabe’s brain screeched to a halt. “What.”

“They were married for fifteen years, kept it quiet because they were in the same industry. Nasty divorce. He got the house, she got the son.”

“Fuck me, William is Eulert’s kid.” Gabe flashed back over the conversation from earlier. _I had a few things that I needed to come back and take care of...I won’t be here much longer._

“Oh, hell. We’ve been looking at the wrong parent.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Everyone was on stage. The fourth runner up, Afghanistan, had already been eliminated. “And our third runner up, Mr. Canada!” With a smile and wave, Canada accepted the small bouquet and moved to the side of the stage.

“Jesse, we were wrong. It’s Eulert. He’s the bomber, probably working with William.”

Without moving his lips, Jesse muttered, “So where’s the fuckin’ bomb?”

Gabe had learned to trust his instincts over the years, to go with when something felt odd. He ran over to the door-that-wasn’t-a-mop closet that had bothered him earlier that William had gone into.

Son of a bitch. It _was_ a mop closet, and on the floor was the torch. “Jesse, the torch is the bomb. Repeat, the torch is the bomb.”

“I can’t just grab it,” Jesse said, teeth gritted. “Security will get me. It’s a live goddamn broadcast.”

“Hang tight, then.” God damn, there he was. “Eulert!” He was lurking at the edge of the stage, eyes on what was going on in front of them. The pageant coach turned his head, whites of his eyes showing as he clutched something in his hand.

“Do not come closer or I press the button.” Gabe skidded to a stop ten feet away. Eulert held a small detonation device in his hand.

“I told him, _mon cher_. I told Jesse that he should go. He’s a good boy, I didn’t want him to get caught up in all of this.”

“He made it through, he couldn’t leave,” Gabe said through numb lips, eyes locked on the device that could set a bomb off not five feet from Jesse. “Why are you doing all of this?”

“Because that witch took everything from me! She insisted that William compete, even though he never wanted to be pulled into that world. I had a job in fashion, a good one! But no, Ellen wanted me to coach all her hand-selected little boys to be winners. She stacked the deck, you see? She picked who she wanted to win and then had me force them into the shape that would appeal the most. And I went along with it, up until she thought she could do it with our son.”

Eulert shook his head, tears in his eyes. “When he lost, I did as well. Ellen left me because I was no good to her anymore, no one would hire me, I had been out of the fashion world for too long so no one would hire me there, either. She took _everything_ from me. She took my life!”

Gabe had been inching closer and closer. He was almost within striking distance. “So you decided to take revenge on her.” God, villain monologues were great. If only they all were this cooperative.

Distantly, Gabe heard “Our second runner up, Mr. Singapore!”

“Stop.” Gabe looked up to see Eulert’s wild eyes. “You are too close. Back up four feet or I press it.” He backed up slowly. This was getting ridiculous. Gabe started to bend down gradually. If he could just get to either one of his legs, the gun or the knife…

“Stand up straight, I am sure you have weapons.”

Maybe appealing to his emotions would help. “That torch isn’t that big, Eulert. It can’t hold that much explosive. If you detonate that bomb, the only people you’ll be killing are Ellen, Jesse, and Hone. I know you hate Ellen, but Jesse? And Hone - I know you’ve met him, he’s just a big teddy bear. That’s two innocent lives on your hands. And all just for your ex-wife?” None of that was true, of course. The explosive could easily blow up Gabe from where it was, not to mention half the audience.

“I…” Eulert glanced out on stage where Atkins was getting ready to announce the first runner up and the winner, and Gabe took his chance. He sprinted forward and grabbed Eulert’s arm, breaking it over his leg with a snap. His scream was drowned out in the applause as the detonator went skidding across the floor.

On stage, Atkins was giving the torch to Hone. He’d won. “Jesse! Get the torch away from him!”

Jesse reached past the person who was trying to put a first runner up stole on him, and tried to grab the torch away from Hone. Confused, the taller man just held it up in the air as Jesse tried to jump and get it. “Jesse, I know you cared but -”

“Give me the goddamn torch before you kill us all!”

“No, you ass! I deserve it!” Second runner up Singapore was now part of the fray, fighting with Jesse as he tried to get the torch himself. Gabe shook his head and tossed Eulert to the side, going to grab the detonator. Before he could get there, it was snatched up.

“William.” He held Gabe’s own gun in one shaking hand, pointing it at Gabe as he held the detonator in the other. “Put the gun and the detonator down, kid. It doesn’t have to go like this.”

“Yes it does,” the young man said, tears streaming down his face. “They ruined my life, tearing me apart over how much they hated each other and this competition. You know that my mum hates it too? But she can’t let it go because it’s all she has and she doesn’t know who she is without it. She still loves it more than me.” He pointed the gun at Eulert. “But now I can be free of them both.”

“Kid, let’s just put -”

Before Gabe could say another word, William fired. The shot went wild, hitting Gabe in the upper arm. Gabe plowed into him, scrabbling for the detonator with hands now slick with blood. “Jesse! Get it away NOW!”

The detonator fell on the floor but before either William or Gabe could get it, Eulert rolled over and slammed his good arm onto the button.

All three men’s heads whipped around, only to see Jesse fling something silver into the air. The bomb exploded in the air near the top of the theatre, bits of hot metal and flaming fabric falling like snow from hell onto the screaming crowd below.

“Jesus Christ, Gabe, are you okay?” Jesse was kneeling beside him, covered in soot with blood soaking into the knees of his suit.

“I’m fine, just get the zip ties out of my back pocket for the two of them.” Jesse cuffed William and Eulert hand and foot as Gabe sat up, hand wrapped tightly around his upper arm. Ellen Atkins appeared in her crystal-drenched pantsuit, looking around with furious eyes.

“You! Reyes! What have you done to my pageant?” she said, livid.

“It’s a _scholarship competition_ , Atkins. And he just saved a ton of people, including you.” Jesse snarled out.

Gabe nudged his leg with his knee. “I think you saved them, you got the bomb away.”

Atkins gave the two of them a black look. “Yes, yes, you both saved people. But you didn’t save my ratings! This is a disaster.” She stomped off the best she could in her heels, already on her tablet and muttering about lawsuits.

“You know, maybe I should have let the bomb go off,” Gabe said contemplatively.

“Yeah, but then I’d be dead too.”

“Couldn’t have that.”

“Mmm.” They sat there on the floor, in a slowly widening pool of blood.

“Hey Jesse?”

“Yeah, darlin’?”

“You might need to call Ana for me. Also possibly an ambulance. Things are starting to get a little fuzzy.”

Jesse smiled. “Okay. “Just lay your head down and turn over so your arm’s to the sky, okay?”

Gabe lay his head in Jesse’s lap, closing his eyes as Jesse used his no doubt incredibly expensive tie to bind Gabe’s arm up. As he heard Ana start to talk, he drifted off, content in the knowledge that Jesse had him, safe and sound.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“So there was never really a Citizens connection?” Jack asked.

“Not really. Supposedly Eulert saw William’s arrest and got the idea to tie it all to them,” Gabe said.

Ana frowned. “Then how did he get the information to put in the letter about the makeup of the bombs and such?”

Jesse grinned as he leaned back in his chair. “Apparently Gérard needs to be more careful with sensitive materials. He’d had Eulert over for dinner a while back, and the lil jerk went snoopin’ around Gérard’s place, saw some files that he shouldn’t.”

On the video screen in the hotel conference room, Jack shook his head. “God. And all this over a nasty divorce and a male beauty pageant.”

“Scholarship competition,” Jesse and Gabe said in unison. Ana and Jack both stared at them.

“We’re...going to forget that ever happened,” Gabe said, closing his eyes in consternation.

“...All right.” Jack squared the files on his desk. “Ana is going to take custody of our prisoners and take them over to UN Headquarters, let them sort out the mess. They’re dealing with the Citizens anyways, we can just tack them on top as well. What about you two?”

“Well, I’m on vacation,” Jesse said easily.

“And I just got shot and broke my nose, so I’m on medical leave,” Gabe said, glaring at Jack and daring him to say something.

“Whatever. Just don’t be more than a week. Ana can take over for you temporarily.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t worry, she deserves it. She taped you getting your ass kicked by your subordinate.” With that parting shot, Jack grinned and ended the call.

Gabe turned in his chair to Ana, who was carefully not looking at him. “Really.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything with the recording. Jack’s the one who started broadcasting it in the lounge.”

Gabe rubbed a hand over his eyes as Jesse laughed. “I hate you both.”

“No you don’t. You especially don’t hate me because I got you a room at the hotel for the next week. Just don’t tell me any details. Your things should already be there, it’s the same room we used as the command center.”

Jesse bounced out of his chair and pressed a kiss to Ana’s cheek as he plucked the keycards from her hand. “You’re the best, Ana, no matter what Gabe says.”

Gabe rolled his eyes but leaned over and kissed the top of her head as well, moving slower from the blood loss. “I’ll be on my tablet if you need anything. I’ll send Athena a message to give you use of my office for the week.”

“Yes, yes. Now please go and shower. You still look like an abattoir.” The medics had cut Gabe’s shirt off him before making sure it was a clean shot, wrapping him up, and slapping a temporary biotic pack on him. Gabe had zipped up his hoodie but he still had traces of blood everywhere. Jesse’s suit was an absolute mess, thousands of dollars of expensive fabric all soaked in Gabe’s blood.

“You think someone could get this suit clean? It’s surprisingly comfortable, be nice to have it on hand.”

Gabe shrugged as they headed down the hallway. “Ask Torbjörn, maybe. If anyone knows how to get stains out of things it’s him.”

An hour later Gabe was scrubbing a towel over his hair when his tablet went off. It was Ellen Atkins. Yanking a shirt on, Gabe hit the answer button. “Ms. Atkins. What can I do for you?”

“You need to come to the main hall, quickly please.” She sounded harried.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Gabe gave a short nod. “We’ll be there immediately.” He ended the call and looked over to Jesse, half-dressed and still damp. “Suit up in uniform, looks like things aren’t done yet.”

They both had their Blackwatch gear on hand, and long practice had them dressed, armored up, and festooned with weapons in just minutes. Jesse crammed his hat down over his head as they ran down the hallway, pushing past confused looking hotel guests.

“This better not be some other player comin’ out of the woodwork -”

They burst into the hall together just in time to hear a familiar voice say, “...our savior Jesse McCree!”

Gabe and Jesse froze just inside the door as forty nine well-dressed men all looked at them and applauded. Up on the small stage that Atkins had given her dinner speech at, Hone stood with his winners’ stole around his shoulders. He smiled down at them, gesturing for Jesse to come up on stage. When he didn’t move, Gabe shoved at Jesse until he started walking up to the stage.

“Jesse McCree,” Hone began, “Who we all knew as Joel Morricone, is an Overwatch agent placed undercover when there was a terroristic threat made against the competition. He saved the pageant, and he saved us all!” There was loud applause from all the contestants, even Singapore - who was sporting two black eyes that Gabe was pretty sure Jesse had given him during the torch-fighting fracas.

“Because of that, we’re awarding you, Jesse McCree, this year’s Mr. Congeniality award!” Before Jesse could move a stole was draped over his shoulders, and a small torch, perhaps a third the size of the original, was pressed into his hands. Hone pulled him up to the podium, in front of the microphone.

“Uh. Hi, everyone. Again. Um. I got thrown into this assignment a bit out of nowhere. I’m sure that those of you that have gotten to know me aren’t surprised that this isn’t really my thing.” Jesse grinned down at Canada, who snickered. “It may sound disingenuous for me to say ‘it’s just my job,’ but it really is. This is pretty much what I do. No Ph.D. required.” A small ripple of laughter. “But what I said durin’ my final question pretty much was true. As an agent I don’t get a lot of contact with the...I guess the real world, you can say. But you all are really great people, and helped me remember why I do what I do. So, uh. Yeah. Thank y’all for this,” Jesse waved the little torch before letting out a surprised grunt as he was wrapped up in a hug from Hone.

They finally escaped half an hour later, as seemingly everyone wanted to give Jesse a hug or handshake. He was pretty frazzled by the end. Back in the hotel room, they stripped off their uniforms bit by bit.

“Sounds like they really liked you,” Gabe said, amused as he watched Jesse carefully fold up the stole and set the small torch on top.

“They like bein’ alive,” Jesse grumbled as he fell on to the bed next to Gabe.

Gabe shrugged as he stretched out, wincing as his healing arm pulled. “They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

“Speakin’ of exclusive…” Gabe sighed at the ridiculous segue. “You an’ me.” Jesse traced a hand across Gabe’s chest. “This just a ‘what happens at the pageant stays at the pageant’ thing?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. You broke a long damn dry spell, and I’m not looking forward to another one.” Gabe pulled Jesse down into a long kiss.

Jesse settled himself half on Gabe’s chest, careful of his arm. “An’ so I’m just a means to break that dry spell.” His words were casual, but the underlying tone was fragile.

“No. _No_ , Jesse. You mean more than that, a lot more. You know that, I hope.”

“So we’re not endin’ once we get back to work.”

“No. I mean, we will be at work. I don’t do PDA, and we don’t get mushy outside of the bedroom.”

“...mushy.” Jesse’s voice was now just pure amusement.

“You know what I mean. No special treatment, none of that. We’re still coworkers. I think Jack will turn a blind eye because it’s not like we don’t break rules in Blackwatch as a regular part of business, but if it starts interfering in operations he will get involved. And I really, really don’t want to have that conversation.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

One kiss turned into two turned into more, and Gabe was just sliding his hand down under the edge of Jesse’s underwear when both their tablets went off.

Jesse sighed, picking his up. He look a long look at the screen with raised eyebrows. “You know, I think I’m goin’ to go take a shower…” He got up off of Gabe and went to the bathroom, shutting the door firmly.

Gabe stared at the door, perplexed. “You...we literally just took showers.”

Reaching over to his own tablet, Gabe stared down at the image. “Jesse.”

There was a click as Jesse locked the door. “Yes, darlin’?”

“Why did Genji just send me an image of a three-foot tall poster of you breaking my nose, taped to the wall of the Blackwatch kitchen?”

Laughter from behind the door.

_“Jesse!”_

**Author's Note:**

> (epilogue: Overwatch HQ, one week later
> 
> Gabe stepped into the Blackwatch lounge, only to abruptly stumble back as something slammed into him. He looked down to see Genji hugging him tightly. Was he...crying?
> 
> "Thank you so much," Genji mumbled, snuffling into Gabe's shirt. "I tried to civilize him for so long...nothing worked..."
> 
> Gabe patted his shoulder in bemusement, wondering tiredly how the hell this became his life.)


End file.
